


Monochrome

by intoapuddle



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Internal angst, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Slow Burn, non-youtube au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2020-05-13 14:33:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 68
Words: 225,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19253134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intoapuddle/pseuds/intoapuddle
Summary: When you build your life out of fear that your mental illness could worsen, it leaves little room for excitement. Luckily, Dan has found a space online where he feels comfortable.





	1. Chapter 1

Barren, his dad called it. 

The words cling to Dan’s skin when he makes his way up the stairs and inside his apartment. It only has one room, a small kitchenette, and a bathroom. A queen sized bed against the wall to the left, underneath the angled ceiling. A white desk, facing two windows. It doesn’t have drawers. Instead, Dan’s important papers are kept in a neat stack of clear folders. The PC is on top of the desk, and it’s the object he gets the most use out of. To his right there’s a dip in the wall, like an inbuilt bookcase, shelved and open. His clothes hang on two racks on the opposite wall to the bed, beside the entrance to the kitchenette. Next to the bed, there’s a squeaky clean black electric piano.

Detached, his dad had continued to say.

There isn’t a single item inside Dan’s London studio apartment that he doesn’t care about. He doesn’t keep items for sentimental value, that much is true. He mostly owns things that he gets use out of. His selection of clothes is small, functional. The only three books in his bookcase were borrowed from the library, their placement serving as a reminder to bring them back in time. He keeps the colour scheme monochrome, for simplicity. Easy on the eyes, and not making any statement.

Temporary, his dad finalised.

Dan has lived here for two years. It is far from a place to dip in and out of. He has made connections in this city, he has good reason to live here and even more reason to keep this flat. He lives alone, the rent is decent for London, and he can commute to work. He has made friends with a couple of other residents in the building. It makes sense to stay. Dan has no immediate plans to leave. But that’s not what it looks like, apparently. Nothing about what this place means to Dan comes across to others.

It doesn’t matter. Dan hangs his messenger bag and coat on their assigned hooks next to the front door. His dad doesn’t live here. It doesn’t make sense that he has formed such a strong opinion about it.

-

The next morning, Dan starts his day like he usually does. With a quick shower, a mug of coffee, and sitting down by his PC. It’s organised, main folders leading into subfolders, all categorised into sections that make sense to Dan. Pictures, documents and videos he has a reason to keep. Virtually, he doesn’t need to worry about how much or what he decides to keep. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t look at his personal pictures after he’s picked out the best ones to go in their appropriate categories based on the year and month. His PC has space for them. They don’t clutter.

Dan puts on his headphones after finishing his coffee during a lazy scroll through Twitter, and minimizes the Chrome app window. He opens up a folder his computer insists on pinning to the side of File Explorer, regardless of the fact that he unpins it every single time.

There’s a reason he has to wade through several inconspicuously titled folders to find what he’s looking for. He doesn’t want or need the shortcut. Dan is so used to clicking through them he could do it in his sleep.

Finally, he gets to the folder he wants. It’s all videos, titled after mood.

“Soft”, “Slow”, “Quick”, “Pretty”, “Desperate”, “Insatiable”, to name a few.

Dan clicks the one titled “Romantic” and sits back as it begins to play. The visual of this particular one doesn’t appeal to him as much as the sound does. His noise cancelling headphones takes him into the moment as he closes his eyes and pulls his dick out of his sweatpants.

It’s all breathy, low moans and wet slapping sounds in his ears and the whole thing is over pretty quickly. When he is close, all Dan needs to do is to click forward to a memorised timestamp where the noises get loud and desperate and longing for his body to jolt and shake as he comes.

Dan exits the video and folder immediately upon finishing. He goes to the kitchen, washes his hands in the sink, and sits back down by the computer.

His head swims with dopamine, he’s got a comfortably soft tingling in his fingers as he watches the new videos in his YouTube subscriptions and goes through his emails.

He opens up his favourite game afterwards, Fall Whisperer. It’s an obscure, 2D pixel art game that starts with finishing achievements and doing tasks but doesn’t end once they’re all done. The player is free to roam the world and to keep building their character’s residence, skills, and relationships. Dan was done with the chronological storyline within a few days when he first played, and has since gone into the online version of the game. After some connection issues that required Dan to really optimise his computer’s performance it works smoothly and he finds himself back in his usual server, with the group of other players he has handpicked based on their skill levels and appropriate balance of taking the game seriously while having a sense of humour about it at the same time.

There are only two other players online now. Dan knows them pretty well. Jamie and Morgan always comment on his posts on the game’s online forum, and they’re always online at the same time that Dan is. Jamie is witty and cutting. Morgan seems to sense every time Dan is feeling low and messages him in private to talk it out. They are good people. Dan finds himself engaging in their mission to find rare crystals, deep in the mines until he loses all track of time and jumps when his phone buzzes with an alarm.

**achromatic_bot** : duty calls, ladies

**falldelight** : F

**ripewhisperer** : F

Dan chuckles to himself.

**ripewhisperer** : you coming online tonight?

**achromatic_bot** : if i can’t sleep definitely

**ripewhisperer** : so it’s a sure thing, then?

**falldelight** : LMAO. Jamie!

_**achromatic_bot** has gone offline_

Dan gets a kick out of just logging out when Jamie starts her shit. He doesn’t do it every time, in order to keep the element of surprise, so he knows for certain that Morgan is currently losing her mind trying to tell Jamie that she was being inconsiderate in the kindest way possible.

As Dan gets up and gets dressed he’s out the door only ten minutes later with his pre-packed bag slung over his shoulder. As anticipated, his phone buzzes with a message from Morgan asking him if he’s okay. Dan knows when to stop a joke, so he responds honestly.

**achromatic_bot** : not excited about work because i’d rather keep playing but yeah i’m ok i only exited out for the lols <3

**falldelight** : Oh, okay. That’s good. I didn’t get anxious at all. Anyway, I need to go and apologize to Jamie now. Also I owe her 5 bucks.

**achromatic_bot** : she probably didn’t even realise you’re upset with her lol, and keep your money for god sake jamie is a scheming bitch

**falldelight** : Please no more server drama??

**achromatic_bot** : dw she knows what she’s about

For emphasis, Dan screenshots their conversation and pastes the photos in their group chat while he’s on the tube. Jamie gives a snarky remark, but this time Morgan understands the joke so she sends a rather cringe yet endearing string of laughing emojis and gifs in response. Dan responds with ‘ _lol never change morgan_ ’ before he reluctantly switches his phone to Do Not Disturb mode, puts his personal things in his locker, and gets to work.

-

By 12 am, Dan is beat. He clocks out of work on time, not a minute early nor late. The means to an end part of his day has ended and he is free to get his phone back and walk anxiously through the rainy night streets of London to get home.

Thursdays aren’t the worst days, but they’re not as calm as Wednesdays. Dan puts the hood up on his black coat and sticks his hands inside the pockets. His bag is secured over his shoulder, trapped between his arm and waist on his left side. Nothing has ever happened on his way home since he started working the night shift. Besides the terrifying inescapable scenarios playing on loop in Dan’s imagination, he has nothing to fear. He puts on an album in his headphones. Loud enough to drown out some of the anxious thoughts, but low enough to be able to hear the potential footsteps of an approaching attacker.

Susanne has told him that the fear of an attack is often worse than the attack itself. The constant anticipation holds a larger risk to create the trauma. The worry holds on tight, and even though it is over it doesn’t leave. For some, the passage of time heals the wound. For most, taking active steps to stop the ingrained protective behaviours is the only way to return to a sane and healthy state of mind. Dan can’t stop protecting himself. He has told Susanne that even if she thinks that that is what he has to do to get well, it won’t work for him. She doesn’t fight him on it. But every night that Dan has to walk the streets of London on his own he wonders what it is like to not feel scared. A fleeting but hopeful voice in his head considers if that actually is an achievable goal.

Dan makes it home with no incident. He goes to the bathroom and gets back in his pyjamas. With music still playing in his ears Dan puts on the kettle and makes three ham and cheese sandwiches. He places two of them in a tupperware container inside his tiny refrigerator, the other he puts on a plate as the kettle clicks finished. He pours the hot water into a mug and drops a blackcurrant flavoured bag of tea inside.

Dan’s back cracks as he stretches in his ergonomically designed desk chair. He switches his PC back on and looks through the Fall Whisperer forum as well as Twitter. He gets a laugh out of the new posts in his followed threads. There are pictures of funny situations in people’s games and servers. Morgan has posted the conversation between her, Jamie and Dan from earlier and it has received a fair amount of upvotes. She has garnered a bit of a following recently, especially by sharing these moments. She made this one into a cartoon, too, where their three individual in game sprites are standing in the mines. Dan logging off is visualised with his sprite suddenly evaporating behind a text saying “ _ **achromatic_bot** went offline_”, while Jamie and Morgan are having the conversation Dan wasn’t around for. Like he expected, Morgan wraps her confrontation up in metaphors after a long monologue of disclaimers summarised into her meaning no offence. All the while, Jamie’s sprite has turned into a question mark, only distinguished by her signature deadpan expression. After, Dan’s sprite materialises back and his and Morgan’s personal conversation is them standing in a corner whispering to one another before Dan shouts it all back for Jamie to hear.

Everyone in the comments are cracking up. Sure, the situation was funny, but it wouldn’t have held its own without Morgan’s art. Somehow she brings those moments to life, making an inside joke available for others to enjoy, while making it even funnier. Dan wishes he had the same skill, but going through the comments where people are saying that they think he’s funny mutes that jealousy for a little while.

Dan has some type of following of his own, but before Morgan’s cartoons it wasn’t personality based. At first, when Dan was mostly active in the thread he made about his personal game following the storyline people were impressed by his skill. He found secrets during his first run that others only found on maybe their third if they hadn’t already read about it on the forum. Later on he answered questions and helped people with computer specs and optimisation for the game to run well, on personal and online mode. He was one of the first ones to test the beta version of online mode, and so created a bunch of different servers that now have hundreds of members each. He’s not in them anymore, but he’s still credited for them and it has spread his gaming nick and so he’s recognised widely throughout the fandom. He definitely has more twitter and forum followers than he deserves.

Now, it’s different. He still gets questions from newcomers that find him through the help threads he has replied to, but now he gets follows and likes purely based on the cartoon version of him that Morgan created. Sure, the script is based on his real life sense of humour, but he doesn’t really feel deserving of the attention when really, it’s Morgan’s thing.

Nevertheless, the attention feels good. He pretends not to care about it publicly, but in reality Dan reads every comment and every message. He notices every new follow, every new like, every direct message asking to join their server. He ignores the requests, because while he drops in and out of the more public servers when he feels like it he wouldn’t invite just anyone to their personal one. It’s his safe place, with people he has come to trust over the years. There is no amount of attention or validation that would make him want to spoil that.

The heaviness of sleep envelops Dan’s bones. He has finished eating and the tea has gone cold. The time shows almost two in the morning, and he has to be up again at eight o’clock. Night shift or not, being up early and having time to go slow is crucial for him. When insomnia takes hold he only gets one or two hours, so feeling sleepy this early on is a rare promise to wake up feeling energised.

He brushes his teeth, has a wee, puts his dishes in the sink, gets in bed. He’s about to do his last compulsory scroll through twitter even if most people aren’t active, but once he’s refreshed the app there’s a new tweet from an account that hasn’t been active for almost two months.

One of the three main creators of Fall Whisperer, and in Dan’s opinion the most important one. Of course the coding and art is just as crucial, but the story was what ensured Dan’s obsession with the game. He has this guy on notifications, and Dan usually hates notifications.

**Seagull** : The community on the FW forums is so fun! I’d create a fake account to be part of it if I weren’t a seagull.

Seagull gets the most replies on his tweets out of any creator. The game is fairly underground, some would say underappreciated, but when Seagull finally tweets every player and their mother likes and replies. Dan doesn’t stray from the norm when it comes to this. He immediately opens the reply box and takes an unnecessarily long time to craft a good reply.

**achromatic_bot** : @Seagull you’re not ready for the cold hard depths of it yet keep your brilliant mind pure please it will only put up the next title

Dan goes through the other replies. Every single person he follows is responding, except for the sane ones in Dan’s time zone that are already asleep. 

**falldelight** : @Seagull HE AWAKENS I LOVE YOU COME PLAY IN OUR SERVER?

**ripewhisperer** : @Seagull Go back to your cave, old man. I don’t want to hear from you until you make an announcement.

**onebitwonder** : @Seagull Reply for replying’s sake. Keep those numbers growing and get money for a good update with new storylines, people.

**squigglyfw** : @Seagull none of us are really human though, you’d fit right in <3

Dan is already picturing the state of the forum after this. Some people are going to get angry and protective. They always do. Dan wants the forum to remain a fan space like everyone else, but he’s not blind to the idea that the development team have a look around it from time to time. Other fans will be annoying in a completely different way, trolling like they’re actually one of the creators or questioning everyone else’s identity. It’s a meme that, in Dan’s opinion, should have been over with a long time ago but there’s always somebody fueling the fire. Dan knows which servers, threads, and users to avoid by now, but when Seagull tweets there’s no way to avoid it.

It’s been fifteen minutes and Dan has ignored Morgan’s excited direct message. He’s still tired, still decided on sleeping early, when he gets a reply notification.

**Seagull** : @achromatic_bot If you only knew what these eyes have seen. Good thing I’m skilled at compartmentalisation!

Dan looks at it. Then he puts down his phone. He isn’t feeling excitement. He is just confused.

He unlocks his phone again and goes to the replyer’s profile. There it is, blue checkmark in all of its glory, and the surrealist picture of an orange beak profile picture that he hasn’t changed for the three years that Dan has followed him.

The most Dan has ever gotten in terms of being noticed by any one of the developers are referral links to his threads when someone asks them for help with a problem. At one point, the game’s official twitter handle made him fan of the week and thanked him for all the work Dan has put into the servers and the technical difficulties section of the forum. It felt good, but for all Dan knows that could have been anyone, writing that tweet.

This is different. When Dan’s brain and body finally catch up to what has happened they do at the same time, and Dan kicks his feet in childish excitement in bed as he reads the reply, over and over. Then he likes it, because why the hell wouldn’t he? Then he screenshots it, and for a moment he considers printing it out and framing it as the first piece of art to ever hang on his own wall. He stores that idea for later as he clicks ‘reply’.

**achromatic_bot** : @Seagull wish i had those skills every time i close my eyes i see those horrors all over again is there any way you could include that in the next patch?

It’s a stupid joke but Dan sends it anyway. He isn’t going to get a second reply anyway, but he’s sure his friends will appreciate the joke. For all Dan knows, Morgan is already drafting this as her next cartoon.

Sleep, right? Dan sighs a smile and stares up at the white angled ceiling above his bed. His phone is buzzing on his chest with personal messages that he doesn’t want to respond to, half of them probably from Morgan. He’ll have to turn off notifications if he doesn’t want to be woken up every five minutes tonight.

Dan gets his laptop out. He has to watch something to calm the buzzing sensation in his skin and his beating heart. He can’t lean into the feeling too much because if he does it’ll topple over to anxiety. So he opens up a YouTube video, one he’s watched countless times already. It’s a stop motion drawing video, voiced over with the story behind the creation of Fall Whisperer. The three main creators collaborated on it; TriangleNoses, responsible for visuals and art, made the drawings. Irregularsymbol, responsible for the main coding and music theme, made a melodic background track in the same style as the music in the game. And finally, Seagull wrote the script and narrated the whole thing.

Dan doesn’t know what he looks like, how old he is, or what his real name is, but he does know his voice. Dan puts his headphones on and watches the drawings come to life, the sound of soft music playing in his ears. After a one minute intro Seagull starts to speak.

Dan doesn’t categorise himself with the fangirls and fanboys. He doesn’t actively participate in that part of the forum at all. But listening to this voice, telling the story that has come to mean a great deal to Dan at the exact right moment in his life, makes his chest clench tight every single time as he wonders who the storyteller really is, and how he could have told a story that seems so intimately relevant to Dan’s perspective on life it spooks him sometimes.

Dan grows sleepy to the sound, paying almost no attention the the actual video. He could tell this story in his sleep. He doesn’t have to actively listen. Once it’s over, Dan shuts his laptop off, closes his eyes, and falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi


	2. Chapter 2

When Dan opens up their personal server the next day Morgan is nowhere to be found. Jamie is there, as well as Mason and Sam, but there’s no sign of the pink haired sprite running around impulsively today. Dan replied to her messages as soon as he woke up, finally feeling ready to face the reality of the night before. She didn’t reply, but he wasn’t bothered. He figured she was asleep and would come online by eleven, at the same time as Dan like she always does.

 **onebitwonder** : Woah! What are you doing here, chrome?

The three of them are getting rid of weeds growing inside the house when Dan enters their cabin after dropping some of his self earned gold in the teams’ shared money well.

 **achromatic_bot** : i should ask you that isn’t it really late in america

 **onebitwonder** : Figure you’re too famous for us now? Here to say your goodbyes?

Jamie gets her swords out and pokes Mason in the side, causing him to lose a third of his health. Dan is thankful for it. They immediately start to bicker about not using weapons at home so Dan doesn’t have to respond to the weird statement.

He has been getting replies in droves after Seagull replied to his tweet. People have been talking about it on the forum, too. The discussions Dan expected started, with people wanting to protect the forum while others are trolling, but the thread Dan was glued to all throughout breakfast was the one about the reply.

People are happy for him, and they’re all curious about the fact that Seagull has seen some of the fanart and fanfiction that the forum keeps mostly hidden. Some of it is widely appreciated. The family friendly fan creations about the characters gets shared across platforms and Dan is frankly impressed with some of it. There is a different, much more raunchy side of the community though, and those are always the threads Dan goes to when he’s in the mood to read fanfic.

He keeps it secret, mostly. He doesn’t talk about it publicly because he doesn’t want that to jeopardise the success of his servers, but the people that take a closer look must know. Dan has read most if not all of the fanfiction out there about the two main male side characters in the story. It is heavily implied that they are a couple but not explicitly stated, and the writers of the community have really run with that. That’s how Dan befriended Mason and Sam, anyway. Everyone knows they’re part of his server. Everyone knows what they’re known for, because unlike Dan they aren’t shy talking publicly about the queer undertones in Fall Whisperer.

The thread was mostly joking about it, certain that Seagull wasn’t serious with his reply. He can’t have seen the explicit writing and art, they write. In order to find it you have to search for it, and why would the writer of the storyline intentionally seek out smut about his own creation? The queerness wasn’t intentional, after all. That’s only the stuff that fanboys and fangirls want to believe because nowadays everything just has to be gay.

Dan kind of hates that he is part of that discussion now. He tweeted it as a joke, not expecting a reply. He was mostly poking at Sam and Mason, because they of all people know that he’s the opposite of disgusted by their brilliant writing. Dan didn’t take Seagull’s response seriously, but he’s sure he must have seen some of it. Dan doesn’t speculate outside of his personal conversations with his server friends and they all agreed that Seagull can’t be straight. He isn’t out, though, so Dan exited out of the discussion before he finished reading all of it in order to keep his sanity.

Once Mason and Jamie stop bickering Dan helps out with the excessive weeds. Turns out yesterday’s crystal hunt in the caves made them forget to do the housekeeping.

 **achromatic_bot** : it’s not like anyone cares that i was the one he replied to

He needs to talk about it. As much as Dan wants to keep it locked for a little while longer while he processes it himself, he knows it’s better to face head on. In this server, in his safe place, that is something he can do.

 **squigglyfw** : That’s true. It is pretty amazing though. He never replies.

 **ripewhisperer** : He was probably drunk, searching for inspiration by reading Caved Into Feeling

 **onebitwonder** : ???? aaaassss iffff

 **achromatic_bot** : a bottle of red + crying over dye and white falling in love while they have to fuck to keep warm when they’re trapped in the cave? been there

 **squigglyfw** : hahaa chrome <33

 **onebitwonder** : Love that me trying to be smutty turned into people crying over the fic anyway

 **achromatic_bot** : everyone loves a sad wank

 **ripewhisperer** : as does seagull, hence the tweet

Dan has to cover his mouth not to burst out laughing.

 **onebitwonder** : I should change the summary to “Are you into crying and jerking off simultaneously? Then this fic is for you! ”

 **squigglyfw** : Can you imagine the hate? Someone would definitely get it taken down.

 **onebitwonder** : I did it.

 **onebitwonder** : Meh, the story’s been up for two years. It’s time.

 **ripewhisperer** : anyone new to the fandom must be so confused right now

 **achromatic_bot** : speaking of, anyone know where morgan is?

 **ripewhisperer** : idk, we talked earlier and she seemed fine but it’s weird she isn’t here. Probably busy with irl stuff?

Dan knows what it means when Morgan is “busy” with “irl stuff” and it makes his stomach twist anxiously. She was so happy last night. Because of the tweet, and then for Dan. Showering him in positivity and congratulations that, while excessive, put a smile on his face. If Dan ever wants to feel appreciated, he knows who to turn to. It’s easy to forget about the conversations they have sometimes, normally late at night when Dan is in a low, and the things Morgan tells him and that he is surprised they have in common.

 **onebitwonder** : She updated her art thread!

Dan immediately tabs over to his web browser. He’s met with the forum thread he read last, and being reminded he clicks backspace as fast as he can to get to the main forum page. He goes to her thread, starred on the front page as the last one updated, and gets to her recent post.

Morgan never posts at this time. She waits until late at night, when the Americans are awake, because she says they’re always more excited about her work and she needs that when she’s nervous about posting.

Either she isn’t nervous today, or she was inspired enough to post as soon as possible.

It’s another comedy cartoon. Dan can tell by the quirky colourful banner on top. Her more serious artwork never has that banner. This one depicts Seagull, appropriately visualised as a cartoonish, exaggerated seagull with flappy wings and a long beak and fluttery eyelashes. The only thing that sets it apart from just any seagull is the black quiff on its head, as it is one of the few descriptors more widely known in the fandom after he talked about it in a written down interview.

The seagull is standing on a stage, speaking the tweet from last night into a megaphone. In the next frame, the audience full of pixelated Fall Whisperer style sprites cheer and pink hearts float up from every single person. It’s very detailed for her comics. In the next frame, replies bubble up but they overlap more and more for every new page until the text becomes one big mess of black ink.

Then, a dramatic picture of a pixely foot stepping onto a stair step. The next, a closed fist. In the third, she has drawn a wide shot of Dan’s sprite standing on a platform in the middle of the audience with a megaphone of his own, shouting out his own tweet.

Seagull responds, and in the next picture Dan’s sprite has fallen to his knees whilst drooling comically and his eyes have been replaced with pretty pink hearts as he stutters out the second, ignored response. Dan shifts in his seat. He doesn’t know what to think about it, until he does. Because his eyes pan down to the last picture.

It’s written in large cursive letters:

_**achromatic_bot <3 seagull** _

There are no responses to it yet, and Dan is scared to refresh the page. Morgan doesn’t ask for approval before she makes or shares her cartoons. She doesn’t have to, because nothing she’s ever posted had been personal or embarrassing. This is personal and embarrassing. Dan fights the thought and how his face burns with shame, knowing Morgan knows how much it means to him. If she posted this in their server group conversation, that would be one thing. Everyone would poke fun at Dan and Dan would take it in stride, because on the one hand it is funny.

It loses its humour when it’s there for everyone else to see, immortalised on the internet forever. Dan takes the step and refreshes the page. There’s a reason she doesn’t post around noon, because this is the time when the most annoying people are online.

> of course he’s just another fanboy getting off on the whole dye/white thing SIGH

> lol this is an exaggeration right? Like obviously chrome would be excited to interact with Seagull but not like that?

> CUTE <3 how the fuck do i suddenly ship two guys i don’t know the names OR faces of? Doesn’t matter, I’m into it!

> @achromatic_bot is gay confirmed?

> yo how has everyone missed that squigglyfw and onebitwonder are in his private server? Everyone knows what they do…

> ^ that’s true, wow, i never thought about it

> SUSPICION INCREASES

The comments go on in the same vein. Dan clicks out. He logs out of the game and turns off his computer. He looks out the window, at the brick wall facing it, as his heart drops to the pit of his stomach.

It’s only half past noon. His schedule allows him to keep playing until his alarm rings at quarter past three, but Dan doesn’t want to. The world is tilted to its side and any plans he has had for the server today seem stupid, as meaningless as placing a window to face a brick wall.

Dan’s phone buzzes and he looks. It’s Jamie, of course.

 **ripewhisperer** : she says she’s sorry and that she’s going to delete it

What has it been, half an hour since she posted it? Half an hour of Dan refreshing time and time again and finding nothing but comments debating what kind of a fan he is, and whether he is gay or not? Dan was hiding in plain sight, but now he wishes he had stuck to just hiding. 

**achromatic_bot** : sorry about what

 **ripewhisperer** : i thought you saw? since you logged off and everything. did your pc mess up?

 **achromatic_bot** : i saw but that’s not why i logged out irl is getting in the way of things

 **ripewhisperer** : so you’re not upset?

Why won’t she let him evade the topic until he’s feeling less chaotic about the whole thing? If Dan was at another point in life, before he learned how to count to ten before exploding, he would have deleted his account by now and left the community that has built him up for the last three years. He has the impulse to do it. It would be so easy.

 **achromatic_bot** : dw about me lol it’s just a cartoon

She keeps messaging him after that, but Dan turns on flight mode and puts his phone away. Jamie is a snarky bitch and a funny one at that. Dan relates to her and they bounce off one another brilliantly when they’re both in the right mood for it. When it comes to things like these, they don’t work. Jamie thinks Dan’s avoidance means he hates all of them and she has no problem with immediately painting him as some sort of villain because of it. That, paired with her instinct to defend Morgan, has made for some messy arguments that Dan had thought belonged to the past.

They’ve talked it out. Dan has explained why he disappears when he’s upset about something. When he tells her, she acts like she understands. She never, ever apologises, though. It seems she’s learned nothing. Dan is done with teaching her.

-

Amazingly, Dan makes it to work. Every fibre of his being is begging him to call in sick, even as he changes into his scrubs and makes his way to the reception. It’s like an itch inside, a discontentment settled so deeply within that he wants to rip his skin off to get to the source and throw it to the side. It wouldn’t work. Dan can’t dig deep enough to get there. All he can do when he feels like this is to sit in it. Acknowledge it. Susanne says that that is the healthy thing to do.

Dan doesn’t feel healthy when he gets in a minor spat with a patient about their next booked visit. He can’t book it for them, they have to take it up with the doctor, is what he keeps telling them. All the while, they insist he books it into the system because that doctor has forgotten to before.

Dan wants to smash his fist in the glass window and watch it shatter into a billion little pieces.

Instead, he promises to email the doctor to remind him to put in their next visit after the patient leaves. That doesn’t satisfy them in the least, given the sour look on their face, but at least they drop it and Dan can stop fighting to keep the friendly smile on his face instead of throwing a fit.

Nothing stops feeling wrong even by the end of his shift. Normally, Dan would be overjoyed right now. It’s Friday, he’s free, and tomorrow he has the dinner with his friends to look forward to. Dan doesn’t feel free. He feels absolutely indifferent to returning to his flat. He can’t process anything, he has no idea who to turn to, and he’s a problem.

If he talks to Mason or Sam they’ll have his back, but they will start shit talking Jamie and Morgan at the same time. If he talks to Jamie, she’ll keep insisting on defending Morgan and villainising Dan. 

That leaves Morgan.

Dan doesn’t feel scared walking the streets of London tonight. People are outside wreaking havoc to celebrate the start of the weekend, but even as Dan walks past two men drunkenly swinging at each other as a joke he remains unfazed. On another day, during a normal night, that would be a victory. Tonight it isn’t. Tonight Dan finds himself wishing someone would try something so he could get a physical outlet for his frustrations.

Dan does make tea once he’s home, but skips the sandwich. It isn’t until he sits down on his desk chair, warm cup in hand, that he realises he forgot to change into his pyjamas. Exhaustion replaces everything else in that moment. Dan puts his tea down on the desk and gets up from the chair. He pulls down the blinds on his meaningless window and strips down to his underwear. Without brushing his teeth he gets under the covers in his neatly made bed and closes his eyes for sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: I Just Wasn't Made For These Times by The Beach Boys


	3. Chapter 3

It’s only the next day and Dan already feels lonely. He walks across the faux wooden floor of his flat after his shower as he waits for the coffee to be done. On a normal day, he would have remembered to put it on before his shower. The exhaustion from last night has followed him into the morning and despite his better judgement Dan pretends that caffeine will fix it.

Dan has breakfast with his coffee today. Skipping the after work sandwich last night had him wake up absolutely ravenous and he barely registers how quickly he’s eating his cereal before he’s done. He has turned the computer on out of habit, but he has yet to log in to his account. Dan swallows a mouthful of coffee and enters the password.

The web browser starts up automatically, all of his regular pages already open. Twitter, FW Forum, Spotify, YouTube. He doesn’t have time to click out before he’s tempted by the unread direct messages. He forgot to turn off flight mode on his phone, so he hadn’t received the notification. Dan opens them and finds that they’re all from Morgan.

 **falldelight** : Jamie says you said you’re not upset but she thinks you’re lying

 **falldelight** : I don’t think she understands you well enough to be able to tell

 **falldelight** : I realise now why my cartoon might have upset you but seriously… people don’t care

 **falldelight** : I already replied to a couple people and told them it was a joke, that if I were in your position when he replied that would have been my reaction and probably most other people’s

 **falldelight** : So I think it’s alright. The only thing people are saying about it now is that it’s strange that you haven’t commented/upvoted, but that’s literally baseless speculation

The messages are all sent consecutively, around two o’clock in the afternoon yesterday. The tone shifts dramatically by midnight.

 **falldelight** : You’re off work now yeah?

 **falldelight** : Chrome

 **falldelight** : Please

 **falldelight** : Answer

 **falldelight** : I’m freaking tf out did you go to work? Are you alone?

 **falldelight** : I’m scared and I want to cry please tell me you’re safe!

An hour later, the last few messages.

 **falldelight** : Jamie is angry at you as usual just because I’m upset.

 **falldelight** : I hope you respond when you read this :(

 **falldelight** : I’m not angry. I have no reason to be. I know you don’t answer when you’re angry or sad and I know it’s better for you not to.

 **falldelight** : Sorry about pressuring you

 **falldelight** : but I’m really having a hard time with that right now and you know why. It’s not your fault, I just thought I’d explain so you don’t feel attacked whenever you do read it.

 **falldelight** : <3

Dan clicks out of the conversations and stares at his twitter feed. Sam and Mason have been tweeting normally. Jabs at each other and headcanons about Dye and White. Jamie’s tweets are all vague, saying she’s tired of unreasonable people. Dan feels the anger rise up inside but it fades quickly. He’s still tired, almost tired enough to stop caring what she thinks. He didn’t miss out by being offline, is what he gathers while going through the rest of the tweets from his forum acquaintances. Nothing really happened, and no one has mentioned Morgan’s recent cartoon except for a couple of people sharing the link with an “LOL”.

Dan opens up his and Morgan’s direct messages.

 **achromatic_bot** : <3

-

He gets on the server and stays on it for a few hours. Jamie and Morgan are online and no one out of the three says a word about yesterday’s events. Dan receives personal messages from Morgan asking if he’s okay, and he responds with a half-hearted and finalising ‘yeah’ to every question in the same vein as the hours go by.

They go fishing together to stock up on food to prepare for the next time the entire team goes on a big excursion. No one really talks much. Dan keeps the window small as he watches YouTube while playing. Fishing doesn’t require much focus, it’s a lot of waiting around. Usually it makes for good banter but today any and all messages are about what fish the others caught and which ones to sort in what chests.

Morgan’s private messages come in one hour intervals, all the same question phrased in a different way. Dan really has nothing to say. He’s too exhausted to have a real conversation about what happened. He appreciates Morgan’s unending patience. It’s one of the reasons he was drawn to her one year ago, when he was certain he wouldn’t make any new friends in the fandom. New fans are annoying, and so was Morgan, but she still got under Dan’s skin somehow. She messaged him for help with her computer. Then she asked how to get past a particular point in the game she found challenging. She hadn’t played video games before this one, not on her own, so Dan had to explain to her in the simplest of terms in order for her to progress.

Normally, he would have linked the guide he usually links to people that message him that much. Dan almost did, until he found himself intrigued by the way she was playing the game and her take on it. Before every new question, she updated him on what had happened in the story since her last message. She told him about her opinion on every character, every plotpoint, and her genuine awe was contagious. It reminded Dan of how he had felt when he first played the game himself.

It felt fleeting until one point after Dan had been offline for two weeks. He avoided talking about his absence with Jamie, Mason and Sam. They’re used to his sudden disappearances and either they don’t care or they don’t dare, but regardless they never ask. When Dan returned that time, Morgan asked. She asked, and when Dan was short with her she started talking about the game again. After a good conversation she asked him once more, and at that point Dan felt ready to elaborate.

Dan has considered Morgan a close friend since. She is a bit gullible, and sometimes she is so easily impressed and loud that Dan can’t stand it, but when it matters she’s one of the best people he knows. He gets on with Jamie in a different way, and though they have been friends for longer, now Morgan is the glue that keeps all of them together. Dan is mostly fine, he gets along with people and he’s reliable for the most part when they plan to do things together in the game. But then he gets unreliable, at random points, and they don’t know why. Morgan has a way of stopping people from getting frustrated with him when Dan is like that. He has no idea how she does it, if he did he wouldn’t be making people frustrated to begin with, but now that he has her he can’t imagine being without her.

That’s what rattles his brain about yesterday. Morgan seems to always know what is appropriate and what isn’t. He trusts she had good intentions, and since she’s good with people and has a good reputation he is sure she has already undone the mess. It is all working out fine, and yet Dan isn’t fine yet.

He will talk about it when he can make his mind up about it. When it hurts less. 

Today, he logs off by six in the evening, like he does every Saturday. He puts on tight black jeans and a white t-shirt, but pulls on a black shimmery bomber jacket over it for pizzazz. He takes an extra look in the mirror and carefully applies some hair wax to his brown curls. After too many minutes of urging them to stay in position, swept neatly over his forehead but avoiding full emo territory, he decides to settle for less than perfect lest he stay in front of the mirror all night.

-

Will and Rob live two stairs down, and they tease him for arriving late.

“It’s tradition,” Dan defends himself with an open smile. “It’s not Saturday dinner if I’m not late.”

“Pretty sure it still is,” Will argues, squinting playfully as he points a spatula at him.

Rob grins and dries his hands on Will’s apron, earning an exasperated smile in return.

“Then us mentioning it every Saturday is tradition too,” he decides.

Dan doesn’t have time to respond before he’s pulled into a greeting hug. It’s tight and warm, and Dan hugs back just as tightly. Dan needs solitude to function right now. He prefers socialising through the distance of a screen, but every time they have dinner together he’s astounded by just how good physical touch feels.

“Ever the diplomat,” Will says with a roll of his eyes.

Dan and Rob part and Rob puts a hand around Will’s waist, a look of pure admiration on his face as they lock eyes.

“Dinner smells lovely,” he says.

“Thank you,” Will answers.

Dan leans against the kitchen island as the two of them kiss. It feels too intimate to watch, but he doesn’t look away.

-

Haley and Lucy arrive together shortly after. Dan sets the table with them while Will and Rob put the food on the kitchen island on top of heat protectors for the guests to help themselves before they sit down.

“I love your jacket,” Haley comments when she sets the last cup down.

Dan looks up at her from across the table, a nervous smile on stretching his lips.

“Thank you,” he says. “I think you’ve seen it before, haven’t you?”

She gives a second, measuring look. Her dirty blonde hair is pulled back into a ponytail like always, and she’s wearing a tight fitting black dress that she has told him is her ‘comfort dress’ for the days when she feels ugly. Her green eyes look striking when they’re lined in black.

“Don’t think so,” she decides after a few seconds.

Dan gives a shrug, gets a plate and turns around to get the food. When Haley comes up next to him she feels the material of his jacket between her fingers. He looks down at her, surprised at the contact. She’s tiny, short enough that she doesn’t even have to ask anymore for Dan to know he has to bend down whenever someone takes a picture of them together. 

“Oh,” she says suddenly, realisation apparent on her face. “No, I definitely have seen you in this before. I was pissed as hell, and-”

She doesn’t finish the story. She stops herself, worries the piercing under her bottom lip with her teeth.

“I’ve seen it before,” she clumsily concludes.

She faces away awkwardly, absentmindedly putting more pasta than she will eat on her plate. Dan gives a tight nod. The others have sat down and opened a bottle of wine at the table, oblivious to the moment. Dan joins them.

“I had the worst fucking day,” Lucy groans, grabbing the bottle and pouring it into her glass. “Work is shit.”

“Please, help yourself,” Will says sarcastically.

Lucy looks back up immediately. She was about to put the bottle away, but she pours a bit more in for retaliation. Dan looks over at Rob, but he’s too busy laughing at the offended glare Will is shooting to notice. Lucy gestures the bottle towards Dan.

“Dan?” she asks casually.

He doesn’t always drink. Unless he’s prepared for the hangover doubling as a side effect when it mixes with his meds, he abstains. Dan smiles.

“Yes, please,” he says.

There’s some relief on her face as she pours him the drink. When she’s finished Haley comes back to sit and takes the bottle. Lucy’s black hair flows over her narrow shoulders and Dan reaches out to touch it. Old habits die hard.

“Sure?” she asks as he puts the glass to his lips.

She wants him to drink, that much is obvious, but he appreciates the concern even if it is fake. They don’t see each other nearly as much anymore since Lucy went back to Uni and switched to weekend shifts at the clinic, but it hasn’t weakened their bond as much as Dan feared it would.

“Yeah,” Dan responds under his breath.

He stops himself for a moment, looking around the table.

“Cheers?” he proposes.

The moment he asks, the tension breaks, and they all raise their glasses as they return the sentiment in perfect unison.

-

Dan, Lucy and Haley sit down on the frankly ridiculously fancy sofa after dinner is over while Will and Rob are busy putting away the dishes in the kitchen. Haley slumps next to Dan, pushing out her stomach exaggeratedly where it juts out after being filled up.

“Remind me again why we decide to go clubbing after having Will’s cooking every week?” she complains.

Lucy settles next to her and drums a couple playful beats on her stomach with a teasing grin. Dan laughs.

“Nooo.” Haley swats Lucy’s hands away.

“But it’s so perfect,” Lucy argues with a lopsided smile. “Come on, let me do it.”

Haley chuckles, letting her hands fall to her sides as Lucy goes back to playing something that sounds off beat to Dan’s ears.

“Come on, guess the song,” Lucy says.

“It’s Bad Romance by Lady Gaga,” Haley responds immediately.

Lucy tuts.

“You can’t play,” she whines.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re the drum, silly!”

Dan just watches the two of them, both so tiny and drunk and cute, playing off one another like some off brand comedy duo no one asked for but Dan will enjoy it nonetheless. Haley, amazingly, concedes and Lucy trains her eyes on Dan’s.

“Now, Dan,” she challenges. “Guess the song.”

He really does try, at first. He listens close, tries to tap along, he even hums to the rhythm to see if it helps. Dan just ends up more confused and before long the three of them are wheezing, clutching their stomachs, as Lucy keeps insisting on playing the same indistinguishable beat on Haley’s stomach.

“I swear to God you’re trolling me,” Dan struggles to say, breath lost to laughter.

“Am not!” Lucy says. “Come on!”

“I don’t even know it at this point,” Haley laughs.

“Between Two Lungs!” Lucy practically shouts. “Florence and the Machine! Hello?”

“What?” Dan asks, wiping a tear. “What’s that?”

Lucy’s expression of pure horror has Dan bending over again, pointing at her face in explanation.

“Just ‘cause you only listen to video game soundtracks and emo music,” Lucy complains. “2007 was twelve years ago, Dan, get over it.”

“You have to pick a popular song!” Dan argues. “That isn’t even a single! And if it was it can’t have been successful.”

Lucy takes out her phone at that, looking focused through the drunken mist over her eyes. She connects it to the wireless speakers and puts on a song.

“That’s Dog Days,” Haley comments.

“This isn’t about the song,” Lucy shoots back. “It’s about education. Listen and learn, children. We pregame to this album or tonight’s off.”

Dan sits back, grinning from ear to ear as he listens to the music, barely noticing Will and Rob returning until Will questions the music choice and insists they change it. He loses the battle without much force to Rob’s steadying hand on his thigh that Dan only just catches a glimpse of when he glances over at the two of them on the other sofa.

-

Life seems easy when Dan is comfortably drunk and he’s standing between Lucy and Haley in front of the bathroom mirror. The album has started over, the evening hours going by quickly and getting lost to ridiculous conversations and an excessive intake of beer and wine.

“This lighting,” Haley moans as she touches up the powder on her face with a brush. “I’m going to weep.”

“I worked too hard on your eyeliner for tears,” Lucy warns.

She elbows Dan in the side accidentally and he whines loudly, but doesn’t retaliate. Even drunk he doesn’t trust his size to even playfully hit back. Lucy rolls her eyes at his reaction but mouths an apology when they lock eyes in the mirror. Dan grins a shrug and goes back to messing with his hair. There is no way he can stand in front of a mirror and not touch it, willing the stray hairs into place into a shape that looks less like a broccoli head.

“I’m done,” Lucy says, discarding the q-tip in the bin next to the sink after dragging it under her eye where her mascara had shed.

“Same, I guess,” Haley agrees reluctantly, giving herself a dissatisfied once over in the mirror.

Dan says nothing, but he keeps running his fingers through his hair. It is their decision when they’re done, after all. Dan doesn’t have to mind any make up, he is just ridiculously obsessed with the mop on his head that will never sit right.

“Dan, are you finished?” Lucy asks.

“Obviously,” Dan says. “I was just waiting for you.”

“Uh-huh,” Haley says, and she shares a look with Lucy in the mirror that he doesn’t know how to decipher. “Hey, lean down.”

Dan doesn’t think before he complies, face suddenly close to Haley’s and he pulls a ridiculous smiling grimace that makes her laugh. She pokes into his dimple and tilts her head.

“Some powder,” she says softly, “for you.”

She swirls the brush into the little tin and pats it onto his face before Dan has time to respond. He’s too overwhelmed by their close proximity, by the physical touch, and he’s drunk enough to close his eyes and enjoy it without overthinking.

Lucy moves to stand next to Haley and study the result.

“Looks good,” she says.

“Less lobster?” Dan asks, and Lucy bursts out laughing.

Haley puts the makeup away and looks at him with fluttering lashes and a sympathetic pout to her lips.

“No lobster,” she assures. “Not before and not now.”

Dan’s insides flutter even if the wording is ridiculous, so he stands back up with a cough to fill the tense silence. The girls don’t seem to notice, and Lucy’s about to walk out when Haley grabs her arm.

“No,” she orders. “Water shots before we leave.”

“Come on,” Lucy groans, trying to pull her arm away.

She resists every time, despite solid proof that nights with water shots are better than those without, for every one of them. So Dan helps by putting his arm over her shoulders, really preventing her from leaving.

“Water shots are lame,” Lucy grumbles in a childish tone.

“No, they are twenty five plus required,” Haley counters as she fills up three plastic cups with tap water.

It turns into a game, downing ‘shot’ after shot, cheering each other on as if it’s meant to have the opposite effect. It works, and Dan sobers up a bit, but not too much, and they’re finally ready to leave. They almost forget to say their goodbyes to Will and Rob, and the guys probably won’t let them forget it. Dan hugs both of them and thanks them for the nice evening, words coming out easily. Haley stands back while Lucy hugs them, arms crossed to shield herself from the same gesture.

“Take care of yourselves,” Will says seriously, giving Lucy a measured look.

“ _Little_ brother,” she reminds him, pointing to his chest.

He isn’t nearly as drunk as her, and Dan has to laugh at the switched roles. Lucy isn’t done, though.

“ _Big_ sister,” she goes on, pointing the same finger to her own chest.

“Right,” Will agrees, holding back a laugh. “Me Tarzan, you Jane. I got it. Have fun now.”

There’s a millisecond of a look, a quick glance, but Dan can immediately tell that Will has just asked him to be the responsible one tonight. Tension that Dan thought he was free from for tonight comes back. For one, he feels like giving Will a lecture about how tired it is that he, as a guy, should take care of the girls as if they are helpless. He has no time for that. All Dan does is nod when Will steals a second glance for affirmation. A tight lipped smile and something inkling into reluctant agreement. There’s a moment of relief on his face and they walk out the door.

Lucy nearly doubles over laughing on their way out, and she steadies herself on Dan’s arm. Haley grabs the other one, and they make their ways down the stairs, somehow, in this configuration.

A wave of anxiety rolls through Dan’s chest as they make it outside to the bus stop. He’s sobering up while they’re still pissed. He needs liquor once they arrive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Modern Day Cain by I DON'T KNOW HOW BUT THE FOUND ME


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings for this chapter: disappointing (but consensual) casual sex, described panic attack and derealisation

The walk sobers them up. The club is only fifteen minutes away, and Dan walks quietly next to them as they keep talking. It goes from rushed, excited noises and slows into something close to a normal conversation. It has been a long day. It is going to be a long night. Dan feels it somewhere deep inside, but he wants to push through it, and so he tries to.

The club is all noise, small and crowded, but Dan makes his way to the bar fairly easily. He has his height to thank for that, even if he feels like a weird giant as Haley and Lucy walk in a line behind him as if shielded by his mere size.

They receive their drinks quickly. If Dan is the one that gets them from place to place quickly, Lucy and Haley are the ones that get the bartender’s attention without much hassle. In this strange context, the three of them are somewhat of a dream team.

Dan is perfectly sober when they leave the bar. He is perfectly sober when he watches Lucy slur words he can’t hear over the music. He is perfectly sober when Haley goes from awkwardly standing next to them as they dance to begrudgingly joining in. Dan grins from ear to ear, looking down on them. The club is crowded, noisy, and introduces a range of scents that together create a sharp, migraine inducing smell. There are people bumping into his back, and Dan laughs as he stumbles and shares a smile with the people responsible. His body is loose and anxiety feels like an odd, distant memory, a feeling he for once can’t conjure in an instant. Upon some half hearted self reflection, Dan realises that actually, he is drunk as all hell.

“I’m drunk,” Dan announces unceremoniously.

They are standing outside watching Lucy smoke. Haley clings to Dan’s arm. He can feel her smile through the sleeve of his jacket.

“Really?” Lucy asks sarcastically. She pulls the cigarette packet from her purse and offers it to him. “Care for a smoke?”

Dan looks down on it, knowing he shouldn’t, and takes it.

“Yeah,” he answers.

Lucy smiles brightly.

“He is drunk!” she cheers.

Haley giggles. Normally, she can’t even hear the flick of a lighter without making a statement about how wrong and disgusting it is to smoke. Under the influence, she doesn’t feel as obligated to her moral compass.

“And Haley’s horny,” Lucy says, sizing up the lack of space between the two of them. “So she’s definitely pissed.”

Dan puts his arm around Haley’s shoulders and pulls her closer. Pushing her face in his chest is all her, though. He shouldn’t indulge her, that much he knows even as he takes a drag of the cigarette and squeezes her shoulder. The only difference right now is that he doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. She can get handsy. She can get clingy. Behind all the better judgement Dan is capable of making, it feels good. Why doesn’t he just allow things to feel good?

“Not horny,” Haley says as she pulls away, but only slightly. “Not for Dan, anyway.”

“Wow,” Dan responds, deadpan. “Thanks.”

Lucy laughs and slaps him on the arm.

“You’re so fucking funny when you’re drunk.”

-

It takes all but thirty minutes after they go back inside for Dan to lose track of the girls. He looks for the brown ponytail and the long black hair as he makes his way up the stairs, but they’re gone. A memory of Will’s quick but effective look of worry flashes in Dan’s mind. Once he reaches the second floor, not as crowded but just as messy, his suddenly pounding heart reminds him that his anxiety has not and will not leave, no matter how much he drinks.

His vision starts to blur. The panic starts to rise, every noise ten times louder, every scent that much sharper, every person accidentally bumping into him a punch in the chest. Dan steadies himself on the railing and stops himself from looking down on what is visible of the first floor from here. He is steadily verging onto the wrong side of drunk as the tension coiling in the pit of his stomach snaps into dizziness. His surroundings are floating and his heart is racing and Dan fights to feed into the feelings, but the thoughts come nonetheless.

_I’m going to die._

Dan tries to find some inward place of solace, somewhere in his mind that offers something other than panic.

_It’s not anxiety. It’s a heart attack._

Dan tries to stop his legs from shaking. He can see people walk past him in his peripheral and, despite everything, he is adamant about not letting on.

_If it isn’t a heart attack, it’s psychosis. I’m going into psychosis and you know once your mind flips that switch, there’s no way to un-flip it._

They’re not new. They’re painfully unoriginal. From an objective standpoint, they’re laughable. But in this state all Dan needs to do is faintly brush against those thoughts for him to be convinced that they are true.

Until he sees them, standing by the pooltable on the second floor with some guys that don’t look intimidating, smiling with drinks in their hands, looking like they’re having a great time.

He isn’t relieved. Rather, all the worry Dan built up drops into his stomach. He’s going to start shaking again. He makes his way forward blindly, on stumbling feet, as he tries to move to someplace where he won’t be seen.

The line to the bathroom is a mile long, so he ends up on the balcony. It isn’t completely void of other people, but there’s an unoccupied bench that Dan would crawl on his hands and knees to sit on. He slumps down heavily.

In a flurry of indecision Dan fishes his phone out of his pocket, opens his contacts list, and clicks a number. He puts the phone to his ear. Only two signals go through before the person on the other end responds.

“Chrome…?” comes hesitant from Morgan.

It is long since he last heard her voice. He sometimes forgets the accent, the melodic rhythm to it that differs from Dan’s so much so that he can distinguish it from a single word spoken.

“Hey,” Dan says.

His voice is tight. Small and unrecognisable. Dan gazes out at the flower arrangement on the opposite wall of the balcony. In the darkness of the night the lively vines crawl creepily up the glassed wall.

“You alright?” Morgan asks. “What is it, two in the morning?”

Dan chuckles despite himself.

“It’s nice to hear your voice, but…”

“Sorry,” Dan interrupts her. “I don’t know why I’m calling. Go back to sleep.”

“No, please, don’t hang up,” Morgan protests. “I’m really glad you called.”

Dan remembers, in that moment, that he is upset with her. His mind flashes with the comic she posted yesterday and the comments he has been trying to run away from since. Being in the real world for only a few hours puts it in a different light. The sound of Morgan’s voice removes her from her username and online personality almost completely.

He decides to put yesterday aside for the moment. He has no one to talk to, no one to call, except for her.

“I’m drunk,” Dan says, as a slight warning. “I’m not my best self right now, I guess.”

“I don’t know who my best self is but I have yet to meet her,” Morgan quips.

Dan laughs a real laugh and he keeps grinning once he catches his breath.

“You should tweet that,” he suggests.

“No,” Morgan giggles. “I don’t put that side of me online.”

“To think how much earlier on we’d become friends if you did,” Dan muses.

“It’s not like you had a choice once I started messaging you.”

Dan smiles. Any friends still in his life has treated their friendship with him like that, at some point. As much as Dan doesn’t understand it, a few people have clung onto him and not let go regardless of his best attempts to push them away. The ones who don’t fall to the wayside quickly.

“Where are you?” Morgan asks.

“Outside,” Dan replies, eyes fixated on the vines patterned into loops of eights ,or infinity symbols. Perhaps it depends on perspective. “Some club. I went with my mates.”

“Where are these mates of yours now?”

“Inside,” Dan says. “I don’t know, they’re socialising. I shouldn’t be here.”

He has no reason to say that. He hasn’t even thought that until now.

“You have as much reason to be there as anyone else,” Morgan disagrees. “And you’re socialising right now. I mean, it’s with me of all people, but still.”

Dan doesn’t know a person he would rather speak to right now. Everyone else is faded into the background, unimportant until he takes notice of them and their unfamiliar faces strike him with fear.

“That sounds more like a falldelight tweet,” Dan says.

“Yeah, I’m pretty lame, aren’t I?”

 

“You are.”

Dan looks down at his feet. His black converse shoes are wet and muddy. They weren’t when he left the house. He can’t remember when that happened.

Morgan responds, but Dan hears nothing when someone sits down next to him. He flinches slightly until he turns his head and is met with a pair of deep brown eyes warmly looking him up and down. Dan stalls, smacking his dry mouth, caught in limbo between Morgan, the safety she provides, and the obvious proposition about to be on this stranger’s painted red lips.

“I hope that’s not a girlfriend,” the stranger jokes, nodding to Dan’s phone.

Dan offers a nervous smile.

“I have to go,” he says to Morgan and puts his phone away.

-

He lives only a few minutes away from the club. Dan has no time to take in his surroundings before the mouth is on his, delicate hands grasp at his sides, and he is pushed against the wall next to the front door. Dan kisses back. His heart pounds as the hair on his arms stands up. His worries melt away with every touch, every sign of being wanted, no matter how superficial the context. Adam, the stranger had introduced himself as. He offered Dan a drink that he didn’t have time to finish before he’d been swept away by those pretty eyes and the suggestion to take this elsewhere.

There’s fire in Dan’s veins when he pushes Adam down on top of the mattress in, upon a quick glance around, the almost empty flat. Adam is all glitz and glamour in his appearance. Glitter cheekbones, long painted lashes, and bleach blonde hair parted into a, in contrast, conservative style. His apartment shows no sign of a person putting such a face forward occupying it.

The surroundings fade away into Adam’s hands on Dan’s belt. The entire world seems to disappear when they are skin to skin, moving in and out of sync and mouthing at unexplored territory. Dan can’t help but smile when Adam’s hand wraps around his cock and he looks down at the iridescent nails as it moves up and down him. Adam smiles back, eyes hooded in suggestion, and he leans down to mouth at his neck.

“You’re so cute I feel like I’m corrupting you,” he breathes.

“That happened a while ago,” Dan responds, shivering at the touch of his mouth.

Dan leans down, catching Adam’s mouth with his own. He grabs one buttcheek to pull him closer. Adam grins, the sound melting into a horny moan when his dick brushes against the side of Dan’s.

“You don’t get the credit,” Dan goes on.

Adam doesn’t respond. Instead he wraps his hand around both of them with one hand. His hands are small. It struggles to keep them aligned and even though Dan could offer his much larger hand he doesn’t. There’s something filthy and exciting in Adam’s struggle, something about feeling bigger than he is and how that spurs him on.

Uneven thrusts and kisses growing sloppier pushes Adam over the edge. He ends up panting on top of Dan’s shoulder. Dan breathes quick. He’s hard, throbbing for release, but Adam’s hand disappears as he cuddles into Dan’s side momentarily. Dan accepts the slowed pace and the intoxicated kisses until that disappears, too, and Adam rolls over to the other side of the bed.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Adam whispers into now cold, empty air.

Dan doesn’t move a muscle. His mind is straining to make sense of the new situation and he falls short.

“Close the door on your way out.”

Dan waits for a joke. He waits for that warm body to return to his and make the world fade again. Instead, the world around him is painfully present and ugly on the gross mattress on the floor of a dingy London flat. Dan’s breath hitches as he sits up on the side and discreetly puts his clothes back on. Adam isn’t looking at him, he has no one to hide from, but it seems the universe is watching him with a judging stare that he feels absolutely naked when subjected to, despite being fully dressed and on his feet on his way to the front door.

Dan doesn’t announce leaving when he does. He shoves his unwashed hands inside the pockets of his jacket and heads out, kicking the door closed behind himself with a loud slam.

If Dan sleeps, it doesn’t stop his consciousness from prodding at him all the while. If there is a moment in which he is granted a sense of peace it is quick enough for Dan to not take any note of it, much less feel it.

It isn’t until the brightness of the noon sun shining on him through uncovered windows that he wakes up in an agitated state. The orderly state of his flat seems to be mocking him where he lies chaotic and restless in bed, awash with a deep sense of dread. His skin is littered with angry red indentations from wrinkled sheets that feel sharp against his side. The whites of his fingernails are dirt black and he tastes a gross mixture of yesterday’s excessive alcohol and a stranger’s mouth lingering on his tongue.

He doesn’t plan on getting out of bed until a force outside of himself bends him forward and he has to run to the bathroom to hurl.

Dan sits naked on the cold tile floor and wipes the sweat off his brow. His head pounds hot while the rest of his body hurts with icy cold. He feels foggy in the stark light from the pasty ceiling lamp. Exposed, disgusting, and wrong in the face of the memories from yesterday. Normally he has tactics to escape this. Susanne has instilled them in him to a point where he barely has to think before he makes use of them anymore.

Right now, Dan’s guards are down. He is powerless when his body shakes. When his vision tunnels and his body becomes estranged from his mind. When he cries out, voice bouncing off the walls and reverberates back into his ears in a tone that doesn’t sound like him.

Dan slumps against the wall. He is at the end of a rope that he can’t climb up. He pushes those dirty fingernails into his thighs. He scratches helplessly at his skin but all he feels is a dull sting that does nothing to assure him that he really is here. All he wants is some confirmation that his body is his own and that the far away fish eye vision he has of himself from the corner of the wall isn’t real. Today, he can’t find it. His insides are chaos, he is struggling to breathe, he is falling into a pit that feels worse than the hell his pastors taught him about as a child.

Barren. Detached. Temporary.

All words meant to describe Dan’s place of residence but oddly ring true to Dan’s current sense of self. Dan makes it back to bed without washing the sick out of his mouth and readies himself to wait out the terror coursing through him. There is nothing inside to assure him he will make it out to the other side of it this time. All he has is sharp wrinkled sheets and a lost mind as Dan sobs into a pillow and doesn’t feel even a tiny sense of relief once he catches his breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Breaking Down by Florence + The Machines


	5. Chapter 5

To Morgan: _one hell of a hangover but i’ll survive_

To Lucy and Haley: _back home, sorry for dipping out w/o letting you know_

To Rob and Will: _thx for the lovely evening dinner was a++_

Responses he can manage and sound like he is even vaguely near the state of mind Dan hated a few days ago and longs for now. The server team goes on their excursion without him come Monday and Dan sits in bed taking his medication with a cup of microwaved coffee.

He is a shell, punched into exhaustion by the crescendo of panic he became convinced would never end. There is emptiness here, a void only interrupted by thoughts that come few and long between and don’t sound like his own.

 _It was the alcohol_ , his estranged thoughts reason. _They were mixed with the meds, and then you forgot to take your meds the day after. It is an expected outcome that you were stupid enough to will into existence._

Being off his meds might have triggered it all. Perhaps it was withdrawal symptoms. Or was it the person Dan is without them, his default state of mind, the one medication and therapy keeps at bay? It felt like the escalation of something he always feels a small percentage of, always has to manage in some capacity, but turned up to eleven.

Dan feels shaky and uneven despite falling back into routine. He eats when he is supposed to, he drinks water, he goes online to watch videos. All the while he is partly removed from reality, like a cloudy figure from above pulling the strings of an unfamiliar person in a tidy kept flat feeling nothing faced with the stimuli that normally provokes some sort of positive emotion.

Dan pulls up his downloaded PDF file of _Released Binding_ and settles back to read. It takes everything out of him to focus on the words. Once he does, every emotion drummed up inside suffocates him. He can’t distinguish between good and bad. After the peak state of panic, the stuff of nightmares followed by a hollow emptiness, he is terrified of anything else making itself known inside of him. He is vulnerable to that crescendo, still. After a hot shower and a brush of his teeth and going back to healthy patterns, he is nothing if not a small but powerful magnet to the horrors of his own mind.

He gets to the scene where Dye and White cast their differences aside for a night of absolutely filthy sex described as if completely catered to Dan’s preferences when he has to stop. Sam’s words are gentle and emotional in contrast to the scene, creating a juxtaposition that Dan normally eats up. He has the scene memorised, frequently brought forth when he is alone in bed. When he is hard and needy and touches himself, the imagery pops up and pushes him over the edge.

As of now, the words sound stilted and wrong. Any indication of bodies touching puts him back on a gross mattress in a dingy London flat next to a person that doesn’t give a fuck about him. Dan closes out of the document.

“Dan?” is the word his father says when Dan takes out the phone to call him.

“Hi,” Dan responds flatly.

“Alright?”

“I don’t know.”

“What are you doing?” his dad asks. “Are you safe?”

Dan regrets calling.

“I’m fine,” he sighs. “I’m at home and I’m on my meds and I’m eating.”

“Good.”

His dad’s voice is unrestrained in its relief.

“My brain is off,” Dan says, seeking solace. “I don’t know why. Everything is too much and I’m fucking…”

Dan takes a breath.

“It feels like I’m about to _fucking_ lose it, dad.”

He crumbles at that. He puts the phone down on his desk and hits speaker shakily before he buries his face in his hands. Dan sniffs and whines into his palms like a pathetic child.

“You’re okay,” his dad says. “Nothing is wrong. You have to look at the bright side of things. You have money, you have a place to stay, you have friends close by. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Everything said is true and Dan is well aware of it. Nothing he feels has anything to do with it. Dan is scared of his own mind and the way it keeps haunting him, but that isn’t a physical thing that anyone else can see. His dad only knows how to solve things that are physical and viewable.

“Yeah,” Dan says, quietly breathing in to swallow the sobs threatening to escape his throat.

“I’m happy this is all you have to deal with now,” his dad offers.

Dan bites into his bottom lip and counts to ten. His dad has come a long way since Dan’s problems first became difficult enough for other people to notice. Dan’s dad doesn’t blame it on laziness or some misguided need for attention anymore, at least not outright. Still, talking to him when he feels like this makes Dan feel worse. He thought it wouldn’t this time, but... he feels worse.

“Alright, dad,” Dan sighs. “I have someone else calling. Talk to you later.”

Dan is about to cut him off right there, but his dad has time to say more before he dismisses the call.

“I love you, bear.”

Dan presses the red button and feels bad that someone else is unfortunate enough to love him.

-

In the armchair opposite Susanne, Dan is stripped bare to his essentials. He is disgustingly himself, blunt about his current life to the point that he can barely stomach it.

In her office, like every Tuesday morning, he practices the distinction he has to in order to keep seeing her. Outside of this office he does what he is supposed to do, practices what he preaches, and makes the best out of a situation that used to be unbearable.

Today, he has a harder time making that distinction. Dan feels like a fraud. Told by friends and coworkers that he is a bright young man with an ease about him that other people are drawn to. He has his life together, set to his goals. To the people who know him more intimately, he is a good example of what a person with a mental illness can accomplish.

It doesn’t feel even close to the truth today. Under Susanne’s gaze he is exactly the person that he hides from everyone else. Chaotic. His existence is reduced to managing a constant inner turmoil. Everything else is a distraction or compensation for the sense of order he doesn’t naturally have.

“I hate living like this,” Dan says. “I hate twisting everything around into something that suits my needs.”

“What do you mean?” Susanne asks. “Isn’t that what everyone does?”

“It’s like the only thing my life is about nowadays is managing my own illness,” Dan explains. “I can’t act on my impulses because then Saturday, Sunday and Monday happens. I took one bloody step into what I wanted to do and now I feel like it cost me a year of mental progress.”

The muscles around Dan’s mouth tense up as he holds back the tears. Susanne stops herself from responding immediately and looks into his eyes with a naked sympathy that even the most experienced therapist can’t fake. It’s the reason why he has been seeing her for as long as he has. Because she sees him as a person, not an illness, not a fixable thing. Because she can step away from being a therapist and be a real person who has sympathy for him.

Right now that sympathy feels undeserved. Dan does a good job feeling like a victim to these circumstances, to his illness, but it isn’t just that. It’s never just that. His life is made up of mistakes that he can’t blame on either of those reasons. The last one was a year ago, though. He is doing better. He won’t think about it. He can’t allow himself to think about it right now. He is vulnerable enough as it is.

“I can tell that this is really upsetting to you,” she says in a gentle voice. “It matters to you to have the freedom to act autonomously without the fear of repercussion.”

Dan nods, swallowing dryly and attempting even breaths in order to speak. He is small and pathetic and chaotic in this arm chair. He can’t run from himself in here. He fucking hates that this is who he is.

“I’ve held back and done things on terms where I don’t become obsessed or lose myself,” Dan sighs, the emotions threatening inside calming. “I’ve been doing that for so long but now it feels like all that work has been for nothing.”

“It’s not,” Susanne says. “You’re here. You’re talking to me. You’re reaching out.”

Dan holds the eye contact she offers because he feels obligated to.

“A year ago, you wouldn’t have come in today,” she says. “That is huge progress.”

Dan can barely take in the words. It feels good, on some level, to get praise. But to him, it doesn’t feel like progress. It feels like the sort of thing even a barely functioning person wouldn’t struggle with and yet he still struggles with it. This morning was a never ending inside conflict where everything inside of him told him not to go to this appointment, to keep hidden, to deal with it alone. He’s here and he doesn’t feel better. But he is here.

The moment Dan steps inside his flat his phone chimes with a notification. He takes off his shoes and coat and looks at it as he sits down in his desk chair.

 **ripewhisperer** : you should have a look at twitter

Dan didn’t know that him and Jamie were on speaking terms yet. As far as he was aware she is still tired of his shit, unrelenting in passing all the blame on him, and probably correct in that conclusion. Either way, Dan opens up the twitter app to an unseemly amount of notifications.

Most of them are part of one thread. Dan scrolls to its source to find it was started by Morgan. 

**falldelight** : Missing person alert! Hasn’t been spotted in days! Description: 2D, brown hair, lots of expensive armor he doesn’t need. Responds to @achromatic_bot or chrome for short!

Dan smiles to himself, just a small one, and likes the tweet. As he scrolls down, a number of other forum users he rarely talks to have replied. Different versions of the same thing, said over and over again. They miss him. They wonder what he has been up to. Some joke that maybe he got a life, or that the Seagull twitter reply broke him. Dan pushes the reality of the situation aside, the real reason he was away, and decides to retweet Morgan’s tweet with a comment.

 **achromatic_bot** : How dare you insult my armor?

He deletes three drafts of something more sentimental and grateful before he decides on the joke. Replies come in in droves, things like “ _at least we know he hasn’t been kidnapped, that’s such a chrome response lol_ ” and others, that simply welcome him back and tell him they look forward to seeing him post on the forum again. Dan leans on his elbows on the desk and swivels back and forth on the chair as he updates the app, reading every response and liking most. It is strange, getting responses like these. That he is relevant in these people’s lives in some small way, and that they notice when he is gone.

Dan pushes the thoughts away. It’s just a joke, they’re just having a laugh. It doesn’t concern them what he does and they don’t care, not really. Morgan might, his team might, but that is because he has something to offer them in terms of the server. The other forum users, people he considers acquaintances, maybe just wants his help with some computer or game related things. That does make him feel good. Dan does take some pride in the idea that he offers something to this small little online world that other people don’t. 

The good feelings are fragile, though. Allowing them to bloom inside of him takes him back to feeling, and feeling anything scares him right now. For all he knows it could launch him into another episode, and he is terrified of losing it like that again.

Dan puts his phone down and takes a breath.

There is only one thing he knows that really works when he is in the come down period after an episode like that. Dan looks over at the electric piano next to his bed. He has had it since he was seventeen, when he used all the money he had saved up working retail to buy it. The difference to the old keyboard he had been practicing on for years was astounding. Songs he knew by heart and had grown tired of playing sounded beautiful again.

Dan sits down on the small stool and turns the piano on. He would love an acoustic piano, but going from living at home to an apartment is not ideal for it. This enables him to put his headphones in, to make sure he doesn’t disturb anyone. Dan puts the headphones over his ears and plugs the chord into the piano and plays a few notes.

It doesn’t take long before his focus has shifted away from the thoughts in his head, away from the world online. It’s all about placing his fingers correctly, and moving them in time, and listening to the sounds the press of each key makes. There are different periods of time, where Dan focuses on learning new material. As of right now, it’s about remembering the old stuff. It doesn’t take long before they all flood back from muscle memory alone.

It is the only thing that really makes him feel perfectly mindful. Susanne always encourages it. She wants him to try to keep some of it with him, to practice using it in his day to day life.

Once Dan finishes playing, he exhales a breath. Some of it does stay with him. Fear doesn’t seem as prevalent in his chest, but its absence doesn’t leave a void. There’s another feeling taking its place. Dan has an extensive vocabulary, but there aren’t enough words in the world to accurately describe what this is.

The closest thing he can think of, is that it is the only moment he gets a break from himself. On that piano, focused on the music, _himself_ slips away unimportant. Chaotic or in perfect order, none of it matters because none of it really exists.

-

It takes everything out of him to get to work. It takes everything out of him to go online. It takes everything out of him to respond to text messages.

Life is dissolved into monochrome, dull and faded. It blurs together into meaningless patterns. Patterns that Dan has adjusted to well enough to stick to. Routines are routines at this point, he just gets to them despite how meaningless they seem. He has the experience now to know that not pushing through the depression that comes after a particularly bad anxiety attack never works out. He could very well call in sick to work, and not go on his computer, and succumb to the desire to stay in bed and rot away while his bank account runs dry just because he has to pay in order to lie in a bed and be nothing.

Life isn’t ending, even though the aftermath of chaos makes it seem like he’s holding on by a thread, to the unlikely probability that he will feel something other than this dull ache right in the middle of his chest. To some hope that he will be able to fully open his eyes and once again see what other people see; The relief at the end of a work week. The small moments in the day, where he gets a nice message from someone, or a patient smiles at him once he has checked them in, or he gets to eat his favourite meal.

Every time, it feels like his personality simply has changed now. He doesn’t get excited. He can’t even bother to read the next chapter of the fanfic that Sam and Mason are working on once they post it. He can’t concentrate, and during his times online on the server he really isn’t pulling his weight. He is just there, not engaging in conversations or missions. The others still have fun, and they are complacent with Dan’s one word replies. It always feels like he won’t feel anything ever again. He gets lost inside the numbness that takes over his brain when he is too scared of his anxiety to break out of it.

These cycles were detrimental before Dan got help. They caused him to drop out of university. They caused him to call in sick to work so many times his employer had no choice but to let him go. It caused him to go into so much debt he couldn’t keep his flat back in Wokingham, and he had to move back home at twenty four.

Dan didn’t want help, because at the time he thought his life was over. He rarely spoke to his friends, and he had nowhere to go during the days. Being that close to his parents all the time only made him angry, despite the fact that he was supposed to be grateful to them for giving him a place to stay. They did help him, but the issues he had at home before he first moved out were still there. As an adult, it hurt even more.

Meanwhile, Dan’s younger brother succeeded at everything Dan had failed, and he could not for the life of him make sense of that.

Dan did well in school, back in the day. Progress and achievements were what he craved, and the instant validation of a perfect score on a test was a high he could not get anywhere else. During the time that he lived back at his parents’ house, none of those achievements mattered. Because regardless of how much he had strained himself to get out of that town, he was now trapped inside an instability that never seemed to right itself, simply shouting about how meaningless his existence was.

The path to something different was two things. One of them was seeing a doctor who prescribed him antidepressants as well as making his first proper attempts at therapy. His parents forced him to do it under the threat that he wouldn’t get to stay with them anymore unless he did it.

The other, was Fall Whisperer.

That game was one of the first things that he was able to feel engaged in and excited about in years. He couldn’t help but dive headfirst into it. He had a whole world to explore and new friends to make, and every one of those things were crucial for him to want to keep going with his medication and therapy.

Step by step, Dan was able to build somewhat of a life. A life he could manage.

Dan feels the exact same thing he did at that time, now. The meaninglessness of his existence, all the obstacles of the day seem like mountains. Only, now he has the experience to know that these spells don’t last. He has to take care of himself, perhaps stay away from certain things, keep to himself but not isolate; but this will pass. Even though he doesn’t have the excitement of something new to cling to, the world will come back into colour and he will be able to see the contrasts.

No matter how far off and unbelievable his mind tries to make it seem, Dan knows that it’s not the truth. During his worst nights, Dan wallows in the fact that what he longs for is so little. Other people have the ambition to do all of these grand things, while Dan’s one ambition to work towards is a peace of mind. To be able to smile at a stupid joke. To be able to taste the food he now only eats because he has to. To wake up without feeling defeated before he has even gotten out of bed. To masturbate because he is horny and not because he is bored.

It doesn’t work to cling to that. Dan knows as much. It makes him feel so painfully alone, though, and he hasn’t learned how to let those thoughts come to mind without feeling their impact. He helplessly imagines that if there was another person by his side, someone who loved him and accepted him, maybe he wouldn’t have to struggle as much.

It’s an unattainable wish. Who could love a person that can barely stay upright when things don’t go to plan? Somebody that has such a strong reaction to fear and worry that it completely debilitates them? Dan couldn’t be anything but a burden. The effort it would take for someone to love him during his lows wouldn’t be worth it for his highs.

Dan goes through the motions, and weeks pass by. Slowly and steadily the grey gets some splashes of colour and for every time it does he feels like he’s able to make it out with less fear. He doesn’t get to a place where there is no longer struggle, but he can move on and talk to more people and feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of a workday again.

It isn’t much, but for the time being, it is enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: All Alright by Fun.


	6. Chapter 6

One of the first signs to getting better is to wake up with a hard on.

Dan is in between the state of awake and asleep when a sleepy moan pulls him all the way to consciousness and he realises that he is humping the bed and grabbing onto a pillow for dear life. He pauses, opening his eyes for a second, before he throws the too hot duvet to the side, switches to lie on his back, and gets a hand on himself.

He can’t remember the dream, but he clings to the feeling that left him panting. He spreads his legs and pushes between his cheeks as he speeds up his strokes. He arches a little bit, releases long, voiced breaths of pleasure as it thunders rapidly towards him and wet come splashes over his chest and stomach within minutes.

He is still vibrating with it once he comes down. Dan blinks a few times before an incredulous giggle escapes his lips. He gets out of bed with a spring in his step, puts on his coffee to brew, and heads towards the shower.

-

The feeling stays with him throughout the day. Some type of weird fulfilment, fluttering inside, even as he gets on the tube to work in the afternoon.

It is strange to come into work in a good mood. Dan finds himself holding back smiles, going for the polite, tight-lipped nods he usually has to struggle to even muster during ordinary days. He does get more genuine smiles in return, though. Most of his co-workers are middle aged women, and most of the time he feels like he is being constantly mothered during his work hours. They don’t speak to him as much any more as they did in the beginning. They were quick to understand that when Dan comes into work he isn’t up for a chat during the slow hours, and he is thankful for that. Still, their kind eyes speak louder than words could. 

There are some good things about working at a mental health clinic. There is some more empathy, an understanding about how Dan wanting to avoid conversation does not mean he necessarily dislikes anyone there.

He could do without them knowing why he works here, three times a week. After too long of doing nothing with his days, the opportunity came to him through Susanne. She doesn’t work here, but her connection to the place made her aware of an opening for a part time job that she thought that Dan could manage.

It hasn’t been explicitly stated that Dan went from being a depressed layabout barely making it to therapy each week to ‘just another co-worker’, but there aren’t just good things about working next to therapists, counselors and psychiatrists every day. Most of the times, Dan feels like they can see right through his silences and forced smiles.

Dan makes his way to the reception and nods casually at the thirty-something year old woman who just recently started to work the day time shifts. She nods back, a large toothy smile on her face. She can’t be more than ten years older than him, but yet again it feels like another adult woman feeling an intense need to mother him.

As if the lack of parental guidance and nurture in his life is that obvious, even to people without a psychology degree. Dan clings to his loose muscles and the excitement he felt this morning, but these kinds of thoughts never really leave.

Work drones on, but the hours go by quicker than average. Dan taps his fingers on the desk, smiles at the patients, and things go smoothly. For the first time in a while, he feels like he is really looking at them. During his first few weeks here, he had an odd fascination with every person coming in. He found himself entertaining some stories in his own head about why they were coming in, what issues they were dealing with, all based on their general appearance, age, and demeanour. It didn’t take long for it to get old. As much as Dan’s curiosity lingers, there is no telling what anyone’s story is. Today, Dan doesn’t look at them with that curiosity, but with a polite smile he feels capable of and, hopefully, kind eyes.

After his break, a new patient catches his eye.

This one doesn’t look like any other person he has seen around here. Most people are either in their early twenties or in their late forties, and nothing about their appearances strike Dan as anything out of the ordinary.

As Dan sits down by the desk and removes the sign from the window that asks any new patients to sit down in the waiting area whilst the receptionist is on break, he attempts not to look.

He doesn’t get the option not to, though. As soon as Dan sits down the new patient springs to his feet. Round blue eyes meet Dan’s. 

This guy is all contrasts. From the almost reflective silver material of his coat, to the pale white skin, to the dyed black quiff on his head and the thick black glasses frames. Dan doesn’t know which part of the outfit to focus on, because every one of them asks for attention. And yet, there’s a nervous, timid smile on the guy’s lips as he approaches the receptionist window that seems to beg to not be looked at.

Something about him resonates with Dan, as Dan pushes the button for the window to open. First of all, he is a guy around Dan’s age at a mental health clinic. Dan rarely sees many of those around here, and if he does they don’t sport the look this one is currently wearing in any way, shape or form.

“Hi,” the guy says once the window has fully opened. “I’m here to see Eric at eight o’clock.”

Dan doesn’t know where to look. His heart has started to pound and there’s a warmth spreading on his neck that is creeping up on his face.

“Name?” Dan asks.

The guy clears his throat. His hands fidget at his sides.

“Philip Lester,” the guy says, voice going quieter.

Dan hums, getting the schedule for the evening appointments on his computer screen. There it is, Philip Lester at eight o’clock with Eric Anderson, one of the therapists that have worked here the longest.

Dan nods, asks for the payment, and Philip quickly gets his wallet out of his pocket. He fumbles as he opens it, hand shaking just slightly as he swipes the card to pay. Dan tries not to stare. The last thing he wants when he goes to therapy is for the receptionist to stare at him with some strange fascination.

“Thank you,” Dan says once the payment goes through. “You can sit down in the waiting area and he will be right with you.”

Phil nods, stalling. His eyes meet Dan’s.

There’s a brief pause in the universe then, when Dan allows himself to really look back. For a moment, Dan feels like Philip is having the same thoughts as him. Some curiosity and strange recognition there. As if they are cut from the same corn. Like they would have known each other if their paths had crossed in a different place.

“Thank you,” Philip says, two seconds later.

He turns on his heel and sits back down on the same chair as before, next to the green potted plant. Dan pretends to look at his computer screen, and Philip looks down at his phone.

Philip gets called in five minutes later. Dan doesn’t get time to watch the encounter. Eric, the therapist, is a large man with a conservative demeanor and Dan has never really gotten a proper idea about what he really is like. As much as Dan wants to soak in the interaction between them, he doesn’t have time to when a patient comes up to the window and Dan has to get to work.

Once the woman sits down in the waiting area, Dan glances quickly over at them. All he has time to see is the door closing behind Philip’s tight black jeans and vans.

The next hour goes by ten times slower than the hours that have already passed of his work day. Dan just wants one more glimpse. He just wants to see how this Philip Lester is getting on, what state he will be in when he leaves his session. There is a code of conduct here, and Dan is not one to stray from it. Still, Dan’s curiosity is getting the best of him. He thought he was over that. He is not one to obsess like this, not anymore.

Philip’s entrance back into the waiting area is underwhelming. Dan pretends, again, to look at the computer screen as he focuses solely on the movement in his peripheral. There is not a single thing to gather from Philip’s posture or facial expression. It is all strictly neutral, and he exits the building quickly, not a single glance thrown Dan’s way.

It must have been this morning, Dan figures several hours later when his shift has ended and he walks through the cold night streets of London, thoughts occupied with the new patient. He is simply starved of the feeling that seeing this new guy elicited. Some kind of glimpse at someone who could be somewhat like himself. A bit nerdy, a bit anxious. But most importantly, a guy in his late twenties that goes to therapy.

It has been long since Dan really let a new person in. The last one was Lucy, and she practically barged into his life uninvited whether he wanted her to or not. As they shared the afternoon and night shift during his first year at the clinic, they bonded quickly. She made him meet her now ex boyfriend, brother and her brother’s boyfriend, as if adamant on giving Dan a social circle. Friendship is different, though. What Dan really craves, sometimes, is romance.

There are the one night stands, almost all disappointing, leaving Dan with a reckless and chaotic feeling. They are some substitute for the thing he almost had a few times. Back in his teenage years, with girls that he really only bonded with because of their shared interest in music. Since then, his mental state has mostly prevented him from having any experiences like that. There have been dates, but they were awkward and never really lead to anything. Dan made a conscious decision to quit looking for them on dating apps, and settled on partying and hook up apps to get a whisper of the intimacy he needs.

Until last year. Dan’s muscle tense as parts of his memories try to push forth through the tight barrier he scrambled together to keep his sanity intact. Last year, there was someone that felt like more, and what they shared could have developed into something real. Dan stops the memories from flashing before his eyes before they even begin to. He refuses to think about those weeks like that. Whatever they had shared, it was wrong. He can’t romanticize something that was wrong to its very core.

But Dan can’t pretend like the one night stands have felt like less since. Like something that seems like a good idea when it’s about to happen, but makes him feel used up once it’s over. Nothing good came out of those weeks he shared with that person.

Dan doesn’t know why his mind always immediately goes there after laying his eyes on someone that seems to be a somewhat interesting person. Some type of desperation, be it for that moment of shared experience or for superficial validation. Regardless of what the reason behind it is, Dan spends his journey home fantasising about meeting Philip Lester in a different time, at a different place, finding something they have in common.

The imagined scenario goes from held eye contact and whispered words of affection and understanding to lingering touches when Dan gets in bed. In his mind’s eye, Dan takes hold of Philip’s nervous twitchy hands until they’re still and he leans forward to push their mouths together in a frantic kiss.

Dan doesn’t fight his imagination. He puts a hand between his legs and closes his eyes and the Philip in his mind kisses down his chest and takes him in his mouth. There is another part of it, though. Something other than pretty blue eyes and stretched wide red lips and deep breaths. There’s the fidgety touch of nervous hands and soft spoken words as Philip’s mouth slides down the side of Dan’s dick, bringing him to an even more desperate state of arousal.

The idea of someone else, feeling Dan’s pain, knowing it intimately, and wanting Dan with all that that could entail.

Dan has had plenty of sad wanks in his day, but this one takes the cake. He focuses solely on that one fantasy throughout, on the juxtaposition of kind praises and raw, pornographic sex. All with a man he has nothing but a faint memory of now, with a made up personality and affection for him that Dan clings to.

Philip disappears once Dan reaches climax. Instead, the face of another person springs to mind. Equally as bright eyes, but shining green instead of blue. He doesn’t have time to push it away before he’s coming, a deep pleasure crashing through his mind. Dan can’t enjoy it like he would. Not with that face behind his eyelids.

It doesn’t surprise him that it’s there, though. Any sense of intimacy he was able to conjure in order to create his fantasy with Philip was pulled from that repressed memory of a person he mostly does a good job of forgetting.

Dan grabs a tissue from his nightstand and cleans his hand. He rolls over to his side and covers himself with his duvet all the way up to his chin. He curls in on himself, tries to focus on the boneless relaxation the orgasm provided him with. But then there is something, aching and pleading, right in the middle of his chest. It gnaws at his insides and forces him to succumb to the reality of his situation.

Dan tries to reason that the way that the fantasy shifted makes sense, and that it’s okay. It was just something to get him off, because his hormones have been raging all day. It was inevitable, really, for him to get to that state of mind on a day like this. 

Still, a small, child-like voice in his head asks him why he needs to dwell on those green eyes. Why they keep appearing, despite his best efforts to keep them away. And how the hell anyone else can find that feeling with another person, without it being wrapped up inside a toxic situation that makes it unable to lead to any other outcome than something that hurts, even a year later.

Dan’s thoughts are a strange mix of continuing the fantasy with Philip, of having him in his arms, and the truth of his own situation beneath the duvet in his lonely little London flat. Of the person that he is really thinking about, wrapped up in the appearance of some random guy he saw at work. 

It can’t ever just be good. Something fun and light, that relaxes him before sleep. He has to drown in that familiar sinking feeling, he has to make an effort to push the remaining guilt and anger away. Dan focuses hard on Philip, on his smooth white skin and his nervous blue eyes and his jet black hair, every part of him that is different from what he needs to push away. He imagines him in his arms, and if that imagination matches a memory he is supposed to still be repressing, he doesn’t care. He can’t care. He shouldn’t care.

Somehow, the loud thoughts eventually lull him to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: First Love by The Maccabees


	7. Chapter 7

Dan gets back into the swing of things with surprising ease. He talks more on the forums, and on the server, as his previously unpredictable mood goes back inside comfortable boundaries. He has grown accustomed to them. While they don’t allow him to feel as excited as he could otherwise, there is no threat of being pulled down to zero where he is afraid of what he might do to himself.

TriangleNoses starts posting confusing drawings on Saturday night. They are all black and white, in the usual playful style that the artist for Fall Whisperer sticks to. It gets the forums talking instantly, making up theories and assumptions about a new title or patch that’s being teased through the tweets.

While Dan sees where they’re coming from, he abstains from getting excited. He loves the game as it is, and while he would love new content, he doesn’t need it to keep his interest alive. He stops himself from reading more theories as the night goes on. The pictures TriangleNoses posts are just two miniature characters, next to a tree, as some stars shoot across the sky in different formations. Dan downloads the images and sets one in particular as his desktop background.

It’s nothing amazing. Two small characters, sitting side by side next to an impressive tree with branches that reach out, shading their forms. The sky is brimming with stars. It doesn’t say anything, really, but Dan feels a sense of peace looking at it. He might have Sam and Mason in his inbox, fully convinced that the characters are Dye and White and that they’re going to finally confirm their relationship. Dan doesn’t want to hope for something that might not come true. To him, the characters’ relationship has already been confirmed.

There is something comforting about it being vague. Dan finds himself on the vague side of existence more often than not. He doesn’t want to make big announcements, or make his identity a defining trait for others to have opinions about. It could be due to the survival code that was instilled in him in his youth, or it could simply be who he is. Dan refrains from analysing it. Looking inwards he can only see patterns of behaviour that he was forced to conform to, and the idea that none of it was ever really his choice scares him.

Dye and White have each other. They were there for one another at a time when no one else was, or could be. They built each other up and moved past their differences to make things right in the Shadow Realm, and came out the other side with something new, something even more powerful than the disdain they used to have for one another. If that isn’t a bond that defines a relationship Dan doesn’t know what is. Labels and announcements are fun for what they are, but when you aren’t straight the absence of them can be refreshing. Dan never expected to realise things about himself when he downloaded that game years ago, a purchase made out of boredom with no expectations. To know that you can only see the story for what it really is with a queer perspective makes Dan feel like there is something right with that part of him, instead of the opposite.

No one else has to know the distinctions, though. The preference or the label or the flag he would wave. Dan decides that it is because that is what he prefers, and not for any other reasons.

-

Will sits with his legs crossed on the sofa and sips his tea. Rob is next to him, an arm casually slung across the back rest behind him. Will is leaning forward, they aren’t touching, but whenever Will wants to he can put his cup down and relax into an embrace.

Dan is sitting on the other sofa, the one against the wall with the window. It is open now, allowing a breeze to hit his neck. Even if his body is starting to chill, Dan doesn’t ask to shut it. They look so relaxed and happy together, he doesn’t want to change the atmosphere.

“Heard you ran off with someone the other week,” Will says with a playful smirk.

He puts the cup down and leans back. Rob crooks his arm and plays with his boyfriend’s hair, a small smile on his lips. He is often quiet, allowing Will to speak while he looks comfortable next to him. There’s a dynamic between them that seems so ingrained and understood, Dan has to look away sometimes not to feel smothered by the boundless affection they hold for one another.

“Yup,” Dan says, smirking back just as playfully, without letting the memory of the aftermath enter his mind.

Will cocks an eyebrow.

“Nothing else?” he asks. “Come on.”

Dan shrugs, his stance tightening just a bit.

“It was just some guy,” Dan says. “I was drunk. I hardly remember it.”

Something wistful paints Rob’s expression as Dan says it. Will, on the other hand, laughs openly.

“So you escaped drunk Haley fine, then?” he asks through a giggle.

“Didn’t have to escape anything,” Dan shrugs. “She got like she always gets but it’s not like it’d lead to anything now.”

Rob and Will exchange a quick look that makes Dan turn around and shut the window. Physically, he is fine, but the conversation has turned the chill to freeze.

Dan and Haley are history, and their friendship now are on better terms than their relationship ever was. It isn’t Dan who keeps bringing it up, it’s everyone else. It’s Haley, when she looks at him like he is an opportunity that she missed. Haley has never seen the full picture. Her view of him is largely painted by her own twisted expectations. They’ve known each other for twelve years, and yet she hardly knows anything about Dan.

Dan likes her fine as a friend, but sometimes even her presence causes him to feel less like himself. He gets too affected by her confused ideas about him.

“So you never want to..,” Will says once Dan turns back around, “get back to that?”

Now it’s Dan’s turn to openly laugh.

 _If I wanted to be severely misunderstood for every day of my life, yeah,_ he could respond, but he doesn’t. They don’t need to know the details.

“No,” Dan says with a smile.

It feels easier to say it, in the face of their embrace. Dan doesn’t like to talk about relationships, but when he looks at Rob and Will he feels nothing but a validating yearning for exactly what they have. It’s not just about the bond they share. It’s about the fact that they are two men, in it for the long run with one another. For Dan, the gender of his partners doesn’t make a difference once they inevitably end. He is always left with a cold feeling. He always fucks up. Allowing himself to be with men hasn’t changed just how bad he is at them.

“Is that full gay confirmed then?” Will asks, because of course he does.

Rob makes a disapproving noise that makes Will shut his mouth. Dan rolls his eyes.

“Because Haley is what every person that likes girls would want?” he questions instead of answering.

“Don’t ask me,” Will says, holding his hands up in defense. “I’m gay. I don’t know what straight guys want.”

“Straight,” Dan chuckles, reaching for his own cup of tea.

It’s lukewarm by now, but not horrendous. He swallows a couple of mouthfuls before he puts it back down on the coffee table.

“Yeah, he did fuck a guy last week,” Rob agrees.

Dan decides not to humour it with a response. He simply watches the way Will immediately reacts with enthusiasm to Rob chiming in.

“Actually, when did you fuck a girl last, Dan?” Will asks.

Dan raises his eyebrows, affecting an appalled expression. Will smirks.

“Maybe Dan doesn’t have to answer all of your questions, babe,” Rob says.

Will turns his piercing stare away from Dan and Dan exhales. If he could, he would show Rob the depth of his gratitude right this moment.

“True,” Will nods thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I don’t know many guys that are this scared of talking about sex.”

Dan swallows dryly. Again, Rob comes to the rescue.

“You mostly hang out with me, though,” he says. “And we have sex, so that doesn’t count.”

Will laughs.

“Calling me out, huh?” he says.

Dan watches as they keep up the banter. From time to time, Rob looks over at him with a sympathetic look on his face. It is similar to that of Susanne’s, as if he can look past the walls Dan puts up between himself and the world, with a clear view of the fear and pain Dan likes to dress up in jokes and silences. Dan doesn’t feel scared off by that fact. Instead, he feels comforted. Rob isn’t the type to ask anything that Dan isn’t ready to answer. As of now, Dan has no impulse to spill his guts to anyone other than Susanne and Morgan. The offer is there, though, in those quick little glances Rob casts his way. It’s enough to make Dan feel like he belongs in their apartment.

-

When Thursday rolls back around, Dan nearly chokes on his own spit when he sits back down at the reception after his break.

The scene is just like last week. He removes the sign from the window, and Philip Lester gets up from his seat and makes his way over to him. Except, today Dan is wearing blue scrubs instead of green. And today Philip isn’t wearing glasses. He isn’t wearing that oddly cool looking silver jacket, but a red and black button-up flannel shirt, once again with tight black jeans. Dan only needs to glance down for mere milli-seconds to know he should avert his eyes. Philip has a slender shape, and despite his height he is unthreatening in the way he holds himself. Dan can feel his pulse in his throat.

“Hi,” Dan says a bit too quickly as he presses the button to open the window.

Philip didn’t hear. The sound of the window opening drowned out Dan’s voice. Dan feels on edge knowing he has to repeat himself, knowing he has to be composed and professional as he speaks to this man that has been the object of his fantasies most nights in the past week.

“Hi,” Dan says once he is sure Philip will hear.

Philip looks just as nervous today as he did last week. The jumpy twitch of his lips and the worried crease in his eyebrows, both appearing to be only the smallest insight to what could be going on inside of him.

“Hi,” Philip says.

When he doesn’t say anything else, Dan chuckles nervously.

“And who are you seeing today?” he asks, as he fights hard to look like he isn’t laughing at him but at the situation.

Philip blinks, confused, before he giggles.

“Oh, uh,” he stutters. “Philip Lester.”

Dan bites his lip to keep from laughing.

“I don’t think a Philip Lester works around here,” he says.

He wouldn’t have bothered to say anything had it been any other patient. Maybe he is being a bit cruel. Dan’s throat tightens imagining himself in this situation, and how he would have immediately interpreted as being subject to ridicule.

Philip, amazingly, laughs. The worry fades away from his stance for a quick moment as he shakes his head at himself.

“God, I’m really bad at talking today, aren’t I?” he says. “I meant I’m seeing Eric.”

Dan chances a joke.

“Relatable,” he says. Philip has another moment of looking at ease. “He’ll be right with you.”

“Alright,” Philip says, nodding with a smile.

He glances down at Dan’s chest as his smile fades.

“Daniel,” he finishes, voice lower, reading the nameplate fastened to Dan’s chest pocket. “Thanks.”

“Sure,” Dan says on an inhale as he nods.

Philip goes to take a seat, and Dan presses the button for the window to close. He doesn’t breathe, seconds go by like hours, but once the window has closed he finally exhales and turns around in the chair.

He should take advantage of the minutes he gets to pretend to not be looking at Philip, but the exchange has made him feel incapable of focusing on anything other than to calm the rush of nerves exploding inside. He feels almost giddy with it, and at the same time so keenly aware of the fact that this is an impossible fantasy surely playing out in his mind in a completely different way than it does to Philip. Philip is just being normal, albeit endearingly awkward, and Dan is feeling things about a quick exchange that he has no reason to.

Dan turns back around, and once he does, he catches Philip’s eye. Philip is looking right at him, as if he had been waiting, and his expression immediately switches to an apologetic smile. As if he was just caught doing something. Dan smiles back, then cocks one eyebrow, the smile turning into a smirk. He is being way too brave for his own good. Philip cocks his own eyebrow in return, but instead of a smirk he covers his mouth as he laughs. If it wasn’t weird, Dan would be turning his chair around again just to catch his breath.

He doesn’t need an excuse, because Eric comes to call Philip in. Right. They’re at a mental health clinic and Philip is about to have therapy. He isn’t supposed to just sit and have a silent conversation with the receptionist for an hour.

Philip does look back at Dan this time, though, before he greets Eric. Dan barely looks back at him. He pretends to take a call just to stop himself from making some other mildly flirtatious facial expression that might as well be reason for him to lose his job.

Dan doesn’t feel wrong as he allows himself to indulge in the feeling. That hopefulness that their short exchange elicited, small but powerful. If not for any other purpose, at least it makes his work seem more fun for the hour that he waits for Philip’s return. Even with an angry patient calling in, and a sudden influx of emails he has to respond to, Dan does so with the exchange playing over in the back of his mind to make him feel giddy.

When Philip comes back to the waiting area, he doesn’t hastily leave like last time. He strolls past slowly, casting a look at the receptionist window Dan is sitting behind, ready to return his smile. 

So they do. They smile at each other. 

Then Philip leaves.

Dan gets back to work, the smile reserved for Philip remaining comfortably on his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: I Wanna Be Adored by The Stone Roses


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings for this chapter: blink-and-you’ll-miss-it trauma flashback, described panic attack

Haley and Lucy don’t normally hang out at Dan’s place, but tonight the three of them are sat on his floor sharing a pizza.

Dan doesn’t own a TV, or anything else that could be considered entertainment for a group of people. The reminder was almost painful, the moment they stepped foot in his flat. Dan’s little studio being used for anything other than to provide shelter for a lonely guy that spends most of his time in front of the pc felt wrong for a solid five minutes before their surroundings stop feeling important.

Sharing dinner was spontaneous. A text from Lucy, lovingly threatening him to socialise, immediately made him drop any defences he would have hid behind otherwise. Had Haley texted, Dan would have ignored it. Lucy is different. There aren’t as many complicated feelings to wade through in order to get to the good part. She has an ease about her and she isn’t as blunt as her brother.

The combination of Haley and Lucy is strange. Dan had suggested Haley would room with Lucy when she was looking for a place, mostly out of guilt. He hadn’t actually wanted Haley to live this close to him, or to be part of the friend group he was just starting to acquaint himself with. Haley had needed a place, though. Lucy needed a new roommate after her breakup. Dan had every reason in the world to feel guilty if he didn’t introduce the two of them.

Haley and Lucy seem to have found a balance that works. They have a sense of humour that they both enjoy, some shared interests. Apart from that, their personalities clash more often than they match. Dan gets a kick out of watching Lucy not put up with Haley’s bullshit. Haley goes along with it fine enough, to Dan’s surprise. He has always made himself smaller in Haley’s presence. Always accommodated her in everything, tried his best not to ruffle any feathers.

He could have ruffled a lot of feathers without much fuss, apparently.

Dan convinces himself of this, until Lucy makes an especially cutting joke and Haley looks at him with an expression that makes him want to protect her. And so he protects her. Their dynamic won’t soon change.

“Alright, let’s not be mean,” Dan says as he tosses his half-eaten slice back onto the open pizza box.

He is uncomfortably full. His stomach feels like twice its normal size.

“I wasn’t being mean,” Lucy says, eyeing the tension between Dan and Haley.

Haley says nothing. She gives Dan a look that he can’t decipher.

“I mean -,” Dan says.

“It’s fine,” Haley interrupts him, an amused smile on her face. “God. We’re not sixteen.”

Haley looks back at Lucy, who looks just as confused as Dan feels, but then the two of them smile at one another and Dan feels like now he is the one that is being left out for some reason. He takes it in stride.

“Alright, I was just looking out for you,” he says.

One of Haley’s shoulders stiffens. It’s small, it’s barely noticeable, but Dan is nothing if not susceptible to and accommodating of small changes in other people’s moods. Especially to those that are close to him. Especially when the urge to disregard his own needs in order to tend to someone else’s is as complex and deep and probably not good for him as this toxic jargon between him and Haley. Part of him knows the reason he never cut her off is because that feeling is familiar.

Haley’s shoulder stiffens and her bicep flexes just like it did years ago, during a difficult conversation. Dan doesn’t forget things like that.

“Well, thanks,” Haley surprises him by conceding, “but I’m fine.”

Lucy chuckles.

“You guys sure are something,” she says. “Remind me to not hang out with weird exes more than I have to.”

Haley goes red but Dan laughs along and shakes his head.

“You love us,” he says, patting Lucy’s hand where she weighs onto it on the floor.

Lucy flinches momentarily and grins as she looks down at Dan’s immediately retreating hand. Something else to store away.

“Love is a strong word,” Lucy teases.

“Earlier you told me that you’d marry the first person that brought you pizza,” Haley argues.

Dan laughs.

“That’s different,” Lucy says, squinting at both of them. “There’s no middle ground when I’m starving.”

“‘ _Love is a strong word_ ’,” Haley imitates in a high pitched voice, earning a playful slap on her arm.

Dan picks up what remains of his pizza slice. Going out of breath simply from digesting is worth it, sometimes.

-

 **onebitwonder** : you around?

Dan has finished his tea and sandwich for the night. He is on the second hour of scrolling aimlessly through various social media sites while knowing just going to bed would be the better option. Mason’s message is a welcome change of pace.

He doesn’t often message Dan privately, but when he does their conversation always feels meaningful. Dan clicks the notification where it appeared at the bottom right side of his screen and is taken to twitter.

 **achromatic_bot** : yeah what’s up?

 **onebitwonder** : just been writing for a couple hours and need to get out of my head

Dan’s heart immediately flutters at the prospect of new fics to read. He allows himself to feel it and decides not to share the full extent of his excitement. He has come to learn that writing can be a very delicate, vulnerable motivation that could be swayed even from a willing reader.

 **achromatic_bot** : sam’s off the clock then? (fuck yeah i want to read it when it’s ready)

 **onebitwonder** : lmao, yeah. you’re my second favorite, though!

 **onebitwonder** : (thank you)

Dan chuckles.

 **achromatic_bot** : that’s all i ever wanted to be tbh

 **onebitwonder** : so what’s up with you? how’s life?

Dan pauses. If Morgan had asked, he would have said whatever immediately came to mind. A joke, or something depressing, or just a confession that he doesn’t want to talk about it.

With Mason, that’s different. Dan can’t opt out of that conversation without bringing more attention to his mental state. Not that his mental state is particularly bad. Dan just prefers not to address it when he isn’t experiencing any major issues.

 **achromatic_bot** : fine mostly, have been kind of thinking about doing something w the server just to give us new stuff to do

He doesn’t get bored with the server. Dan would come back every day even if they did do the same thing every time. He doesn’t want anyone else to get bored, though. While the new art being posted is fun to talk about, Dan wants to remind everyone that the game is fine as it is and that there isn’t much to be disappointed with in case it doesn’t turn out to be a tease for an upcoming announcement.

 **onebitwonder** : do tell!

 **achromatic_bot** : haven’t decided on anything so if you got ideas lmk but anyway

Dan goes on to stay up even later than he would have had Mason not messaged him, but he finds he is very okay with that outcome.

-

On Sunday, a new drawing is posted.

Dan gets the notification while he is in bed, after a long day of playing Fall Whisperer. His only break was a one hour walk, which he dreaded until he did it. The hours have been going by slowly. Dan doesn’t know how long he has been in bed after brushing his teeth, but it has been long enough for his stomach to start to rumble again.

Upon opening the notification, Dan is surprised. This one is not just a stenciled out black and white sketch. This one is in full colour, in the lovable playful style of Fall Whisperer. It isn’t pixelated, but the image is like the portraits of the characters in the dialogue boxes. Dan’s heart starts beating with excitement, the one he managed to suppress before.

It is in the same location as the other images, it seems. The tree still branches out, but it isn’t brown as one would have imagined. The base of the trunk is a deep blue colour, reaching upwards. The colour fades along the way, mixing in with a greenish turquoise that settles into the indentations in a beautifully unpredictable pattern. Dan prefers straight lines and symmetry, but that preference sways every time he looks at TriangleNoses’s artwork.

The leafs are glowing, all in a blue and green palette. Those branches still reach out, providing that shelter for anyone standing underneath.

Sam and Mason were right. It is Dye and White. Dan could make them out anywhere, even as their fronts are turned away from view. 

White is a little bit taller, standing hunched, those black dirtied boots with the long shoelaces wrapped around his ankles. The most prominent thing is the white hair, spiked up, and the headphones that he almost always wears to cover his sensitive ears.

Dye is standing next to him. Dan can tell from the long braided navy blue hair reaching to the base of his spine and his classic black tights and grey kind-of dress, an outfit that Dan is sure is an homage to Link from The Legend of Zelda. His posture is good, almost defiant, shoulder blades straining to puff his chest out. 

They’re shoulder to shoulder. The backs of their hands are brushing, the knuckles slotting together comfortably. They’re both looking forward, though White’s face is turned just slightly. Always with one eye on Dye, checking in even when things are fine. The grass underneath their feet looks soft, almost as if it was made out of felt, another classic TriangleNoses detail. Dan could make the connection that whenever the grass is drawn like it is meant as a metaphor for a bed, but he is sure Mason or Sam have already beaten him to it.

It is a beautiful image. It seems almost profound. TriangleNoses didn’t write a caption. The tweet only contains the image, like it is some kind of a statement. Dan wants to know what it means.

That is when another notification rolls down from the top of Dan’s phone screen.

 **Seagull** : @TriangleNoses This is perfect

Dan frowns, reading the tweet over. Seagull has really been acting different online lately. Apart from the reply to Dan, he liked all of the previous sketches that TriangleNoses posted. Before that, Seagull’s likes were completely empty (save for the accidental twitter like from a couple years ago, which is still kind of a meme on the forum).

Dan retweets TriangleNoses’s tweet with no comment, and then clicks the speech bubble below Seagull’s tweet.

 **achromatic_bot** : @TriangleNoses @Seagull stop flirting

Dan laughs to himself as he clicks send, blushing as he bites down on the knuckles of his right hand. He might be feeling a swelling inside a chest, one that makes it easier to breathe, a bubble that contains all the good feelings he often lacks.

It is something about the queer representation. It is something about the fact that it solidifies the theory that the story really is about the journey Dye and White’s relationship goes on during the game. It makes Dan feel like it’s okay to think that. Like it isn’t perverse or wrong, something that people make into something it isn’t just because they are thirsting for some male on male action anywhere they can find it. Dan doesn’t think that it is, but his heart does feel it when he reads those kinds of posts on the forum. In that space he has found safety in, there are still people that think that he is wrong for simply living his life. It isn’t outright homophobic, but these people still have to ruin the queer players’ fun by making sure they know that nothing could ever be tailored to them within a video game. As if that hasn’t been perfectly clear, always.

Dan pushes those reminders away and looks at the picture again. He downloads it to his phone gallery and places it in the Fall Whisperer folder next to the other sketches, just in case the tweet is ever removed.

This time, the sky isn’t filled with stars. They’re looking out at the horizon of the cotton candy ocean, at the rising sun creating a half circle shape on top. Dan swipes to the previous picture, the one with the night sky. 

His breath catches.

Dan goes back to the very first picture. As he swipes forward through the five black and white sketches he realises that they’re all part of some story. It starts with them sitting on opposite sides of the tree trunk, to standing on either side of it, to White walking over to Dye’s side, to a couple sketches of them standing in respectable distance to one another. All of them show a black sky as backdrop. It fills with more stars the closer they get to one another. 

The sixth image, the one that was just posted, is in full colour with them standing close.

Dan hadn’t paid close attention to all the details of the previous pictures as he didn’t know for sure that they were of Dye and White. He didn’t even look at them in order before, really.

This has to mean something. Dan’s heart pounds as he reaches for the laptop lying unplugged on his night stand.

He goes to the deeply buried Dye and White thread of the forum. People are already talking. They’re always so quick, always immediate, that fast pace that Dan has a difficult time keeping up with.

Dan doesn’t post here. He doesn’t comment here. He can’t, not when he doesn’t feel comfortable with the prospect of having his sexual orientation considered or talked about.

Regardless, Dan creates a new topic. He places all of the six images in the post and writes out his interpretation beneath every picture, as well as an introduction and a conclusion.

It takes him an hour, but time disappears from his mind while he is doing it. He hesitates for a second before hitting _publish_ , that tight swooping sensation in his stomach as he reconsiders. He disregards it. He wants to talk about this, without hiding.

In some sense, he feels like he has to.

-

Mondays are strange.

When everyone else gets out of bed in the early morning to start off their work week, Dan is allowed to stay in bed. He doesn’t have work until Wednesday, he could fuck off completely for four days a week if he wanted to.

He doesn’t. Dan wakes up at eight in the morning like he does all other days, regardless of what his plans are. He sits up and has his medication with water before he puts the coffee on, and gets in the shower while it brews. His mental health schedule doesn’t get a day off, he has decided. Susanne thinks that he can be a bit anal about the whole thing. If Dan were open to her about his sexuality, he would have made a crude joke. Regardless, he doesn’t trust himself enough to break out of the routine.

The water washes the sleep out of his eyes. Three hours wasn’t nearly enough to keep him feeling stable throughout the day. He can feel it in his sore muscles, the way they didn’t get enough time to relax. Sleep is different to everything else. Dan has decided that as long as he gets up at the same time every day, that should be enough.

Dan gets his coffee and takes to the computer. He opens up the forum to notice he has a significant amount of notifications.

Dan blinks, startled. He forgot about the post from last night.

Dread drops like a brick to the pit of his stomach.

A lot of it is responses on the topic he created, from the other Dye and White fans. They are overjoyed about his post. Dan bites the dry skin of his bottom lip. He feels a bit off. The bubble of happy in his chest is competing with the brick in the pit of his stomach. They are all being so nice, talking about how insightful he is to have made those connections and that it makes them even more excited to see what all of the teasing is going to turn into.

That isn’t all of it, though.

In Dan’s private messages, there is, so far, one anonymous message among the non-anonymous ones that are cheering in support of his post.

 **Anonymous said** : Faggot

Dan’s throat tightens. He clicks away, out of breath, the sensation of hands around his throat barging into his mind, the feeling of being unsafe, completely alone, those that he does so well not feeling anymore, they’re back and he is powerless against them. He isn’t a twenty seven year old man in his own apartment in London of all places right now. He is a sixteen year old kid being laughed at and taunted every single day of his pathetic fucking existence.

It’s so visceral that Dan almost wants to throw up. He doesn’t. He shuts off his PC, grabs the first jeans and t-shirt he can find, puts on his shoes, and walks out of the prison that is his flat.

It isn’t logical. There is a part of himself, like an outsider looking in, watching him even while this is happening. Dan doesn’t want to be outside. He doesn’t want to be seen in this state. But that feeling, like being trapped, is taking hold and making a home inside his chest. It is tearing up a hole where it feels like every strategy he has learned in order to cope with it is falling inside that void, disappearing into thin air, creating a debilitating, yet familiar, hopelessness inside.

Dan’s life is in order. He has a job, he has friends, he has his fun online. That should be enough, the reasonable voice in his head tells him.

In this state, he can’t stop himself from talking back to that voice. He can’t help but feel, from every fibre of his being, like none of it really is enough. It all feels like a placeholder, like an interruption to the life he should have had if he wasn’t mentally ill. A consolation prize.

Dan stops. It is as if his legs stop moving on their own. The small park just outside of his apartment building is empty. There are birds drinking from the water fountain. The neatly trimmed bushes look as green right now as they always do.

It feels sharp inside. Like a physical pain, twisting around his gut. Dan crumbles as it tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Memory by Toby Fox


	9. Chapter 9

The outside world is too exposing for Dan to feel safe. He returns to his prison cell, like a sufferer of Stockholm Syndrome, kicks off his shoes and sits down on the floor.

When his depression first reached the point of being unbearable, Dan spent a lot of time on the floor of his room at university. The smallest things could push him until he snapped. Something as simple as a hot shower, when the air got a bit more difficult to breathe, would cause a panic reaction in his body that made him have to rush to get out. He feels pathetic even thinking about it now, about how he managed to get back in his room only wearing a towel, lock it behind himself and sit down on the floor and openly sob for no apparent reason.

Dan had never cried like that before that time in his life. Emotions were so tightly wound inside that he had barely had the ability to cry. He remembers moments in his teens, when he was at home alone, free to do anything he wanted to do. How he would lie in bed, feel all those things that made life hard to handle, and try to will himself to cry because he wanted some sort of outlet for all the frustration and anger and sadness that resided within him.

At university, he had no choice but to cry. Contrary to what he’d thought before, that felt worse than not being able to do it. It felt pathetic, and degrading. He had finally reached that point where he could leave everything from before behind and finally live the life he wanted to live and be the person he wanted to become. 

Instead, Dan spent his first couple of years of freedom going under. The work he had put into school despite how hard it had been to get through meant nothing now that he was on the other side. None if it ensured the stability in him that he had longed for, even planned for. No matter where he ended up or what he would try to do, chaos would continue to trap him indefinitely. Nothing he tried to do worked to stifle it. The world was a blur, and the memories Dan has of that time now are few and hard to point to as a moment in time. As if Dan was merely a being, floating above it all, watching from the outside and incapable of directing the nightmare into the dream he’d spent his teen years working so hard to achieve.

Going through treatment and having some small sense of stability now isn’t for nothing, but sometimes, Dan ends up in the same place. On the floor, thoughts and emotions spinning out of control, as he wraps his arms around himself and cries.

His phone is in his pocket, just waiting to be used for the purpose Susanne tells him he should use it for in moments like this one. He didn’t learn to reach out for help when he was a child, but Susanne says that that is what he should try to do now. She says that Dan can always call her, or his doctor, or a friend. He has the right, like everyone else, to reach out to someone else when the world feels too heavy to carry on his own.

Dan pulls the phone out of his pocket and opens his contacts list. His thumb hovers over Morgan’s number. 

Dan feels a twist in his gut, an instinct that simply tells him ‘no’. Dan scrolls down the page and taps his dad’s number.

There is no use. It is Monday, and on Mondays normal people have work. They don’t have time to redirect someone else’s anxious episodes, and they shouldn’t have to. Dan ends the call once it reaches his dad’s voice mail, and puts it down next to him on the floor.

Susanne would disagree with him. She would assure him that there aren’t any social shoulds or shouldn’ts when he gets like this. He has every right to ask for help.

So why does he still feel this way? Like such a miserable failure, chaotic and wrong and everything he never wanted to be.

Dan gets up off the floor and sits back down at his PC. He starts up his computer. He isn’t going to look at the forum again. The thought barely crosses his mind. The word he read is already in the process of being repressed, stuffed back to that deep dark place it opened up.

The server won’t make him feel better. Trying to talk to someone won’t help. So Dan does what he has learned to do to cope, somehow, in some non-destructive and equally non-progressive way. He opens up Fall Whisperer, and creates a new saved game. In this one, he will meet Dye in the garden first. That’s more his pace, much easier than White in the caves. Dan could use something easy right now. He sits back and lets himself escape.

-

Tuesday’s therapy session doesn’t move Dan forward or pull him backward. It simply is. He hasn’t fully left the dread that took hold of him yesterday, and so he doesn’t feel ready to talk about it yet. Susanne might notice, but if she does Dan can’t tell. The hour goes by like an anime filler episode, with none of the fan service.

Regardless, Dan feels ready to join the private server when he comes home. To his surprise, everyone is online. His character spawns next to the money well, but Dan has nothing to contribute with today. He walks down to the very south of their shared land, past the sheds and the green house, until he reaches the row of crops the five of them have spent probably too much energy into both finding and tending to.

They are a few of the rarest findings in the game. You only obtain these after you have completed a set few courses of actions, in a special order, and walk to the secret glade on a sunny day. It is almost brutal just how unforgiving it is, and how difficult it is to even figure out. Dan caught up on some of the clues during his first play through. Other players paid no mind to some secret notes found in trash cans around town, but Dan made sure to keep them until he had found all of them. He tried to make sense of them and put them in the correct order, but ultimately came up short. He took to one of the actions too early, and his hard work was for nothing.

Dan figured it out by his second play-through, and the thread he made on the forum laying it all out was a definite boost to his reputation.

The crops are ripe, glowing golden, stretching high above the ground. From the chat window on the upper left side of the screen, Dan can tell that Morgan and Jaimie are currently out in town, while Sam and Mason are in the house. There isn’t much conversation to catch up on, which indicates the conversations have been mostly private during this session.

Sometimes, the odd number of people here makes Dan feel left out. He is close to Morgan, but he isn’t as consistent and reliable as Jaimie. Dan can’t even think to come between Sam and Mason, seeing as they have a special bond and are both two of the most well-known fic writers in the fandom. Dan doesn’t want to come between any two people, really, but sometimes he feels like they don’t even think to include him. He just shows up, puts everything in order, and sometimes their conversations are good and fun, but when he leaves it doesn’t really matter.

Dan walks away from the crops. They aren’t ready yet. He makes sure to leave their land before Morgan notices he is online. The rest of them can have their fun. It doesn’t matter. Dan will go into the caves, or fish, or whichever thing he can do alone at the moment. If anyone wants to talk they will have to find him.

-

It isn’t as big of a setback as the night out. Dan doesn’t feel like he is free falling into something scary. He is capable of doing what he must without much more effort than they usually take. He simply feels a bit unfulfilled, shaken by the reminder of those thoughts and feelings he has been working through in order to strip them of their power.

When Dan comes back from break on Thursday night, Philip is nowhere to be seen. Dan checks Eric’s calendar to find that he has, in fact, scheduled Philip for tonight as well. Dan switches the tab over to check on his emails, to see if he is needed anywhere else. The waiting area is completely empty. Dan is, once again, no use to anyone.

But then the door opens and in rushes a mess of black quiff and white skin, stumbling to a stop by the receptionist window as if struggling to slow down the pace he has kept to get here. Dan pushes the button to open the window, and looks at Philip’s Zelda T-shirt while he waits.

Philip doesn’t look directly at him. There is sweat beading by his hairline. The prominent adam’s apple bobs as he swallows and catches his breath. For a moment, Philip feels like any other patient. Caught in his own head and viewing Dan for what he is in this place. The person you state your name to, before the real treatment takes place.

Philip clears his throat. Their eyes meet for a moment. There is a wall up, though. A wall that Dan never noticed wasn’t there before. Perhaps that pull he felt towards this stranger wasn’t just because of the self projection of shared interests and similar age. Perhaps the pull was due to the absence of this new wall. Dan has no idea how to tear it down.

“Philip Lester,” Philip says with a tight nod.

Dan glances at his shirt momentarily before he pretends to open up Eric’s calendar. He already knows Philip has been scheduled.

“Right,” Dan nods with a small smile. “He will be right with you.”

Philip nods. “Thanks, Daniel.”

He doesn’t smile back at him. He doesn’t even look at him for the minutes he spends on that red armchair next to the houseplant. Dan looks, though. Dan looks at the new kind of nerves that don’t make him look as rigid and nervous as he usually does. Philip’s legs are spread and he is leaning forward on his elbows where he rests them on his lap. It looks like something deeper than being nervous for a therapy appointment. There is something broken down about him today, and Dan wants to fix it.

All he can do is covertly stare at him for those few minutes before he is called in and make up a story of what could be the cause of his strange demeanor.

When Philip leaves this time, he doesn’t look at Dan.

Dan could have really used a pick-me-up this week. Philip has no obligation to provide him that, though. His only obligation is to state his name to Dan and get in for his therapy appointment. Somehow, that seems unfair.

-

“Oi!”

Dan’s playlist is between songs when the noise startles him. He takes a half-step of hesitation before he keeps walking. He turns the music off in order to hear, but he doesn’t look back.

Friday nights are the worst. Friday nights are filled with people and alcohol and an even more pressing fear of danger. Dan just wants to get to the tube. 

“Oi!” is heard again. Dan’s heart roars as a prelude to panic. “Hey, wait!”

The voice doesn’t sound as threatening upon the last two words spoken. Dan hesitates. He could just look back. He could pretend to be looking back for a completely different reason if it turns out to be some lad looking for a fight.

“Dan!”

Dan finally stops at that. He turns around, and as usual, he wasn’t running from a fight. He was running from Jimmy, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, walking up to him from the terrace of the bar Dan just passed with a wide smile on his face.

Dan pulls his headphones down from over his ears and attempts to smile, but his nerves haven’t settled enough to enable more than a tight nod.

“Fearing for your life, were you?” Jimmy asks once he finally approaches him.

Dan manages that smile then, though he has a hard time looking directly at him.

Jimmy is as good looking now as he always was. His curly brown hair is styled into a playful fringe that Dan could only ever dream of managing for himself. His bright eyes shine, even under the cloud of alcohol. He doesn’t seem drunk, though. He smiles and looks straight at Dan, attentive as always.

“Only a little bit,” Dan says with a shrug.

Jimmy grins. “You’re surrounded by psychos all night and then you’re scared of me?”

Dan snorts.

“The psychos are out on the streets, actually,” he says. “I’ve got nothing to be afraid of when those people come in to get treated.”

Jimmy seems to consider it for a moment as he takes a thoughtful drag of his cigarette.

“I stand corrected,” he says, and this time Dan dares to look him in the eyes.

Dan smiles hesitantly, shifting on his feet. He has a tube to catch and no time to talk to a person he has tried to forget exists. But Jimmy is looking at him like he wants him to stay.

“So what’re you doing out?” Dan asks when Jimmy says nothing.

“Oh,” Jimmy says. “Nothing, really. Went to the pub with some friends.”

“Nice,” Dan comments awkwardly.

Jimmy quirks an eyebrow. Now Dan really has to look away.

“D’you wanna join us?” he asks. “We were thinking about doing pub trivia or something. Could always use another brain.”

It is a clear invitation to something that Dan had thought was an ended chapter. It isn’t just friendly, not when Jimmy looks at him so intensely, practically begging for a ‘yes’.

Alcohol and strangers aren’t a good mix for Dan, though. He already feels vulnerable. But the idea of picking up where they left off is enticing him. Jimmy’s smile and effortless flirting aren’t easy to say no to.

“Sorry,” Dan says, the fear of hoping for anything talking for him. “I’m beat.”

Jimmy groans in disappointment. He tosses the cigarette into a puddle and takes one step closer. Fanning his eyelashes ridiculously, he puts a hand on Dan’s arm.

“Please,” he says. “For me?”

 _I haven’t heard from you in over a year. I don’t owe you anything,_ part of Dan wants to say.

Instead, Dan laughs.

“You’re cute,” he says in a moment of bravery as his heart beats fast. “My brain doesn’t work well enough for pub trivia though. I’d drag you all down with me.”

Jimmy squeezes Dan’s arm before he puts it inside his own jeans pocket. Dan glances at it and looks up immediately, willing himself not to take in just how tight Jimmy’s jeans are.

“Alright, fine,” Jimmy says, but his smile betrays the put-out tone.

“Sorry,” Dan says again.

Jimmy giggles and shakes his head at him.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I’m mostly joking. It’s good to see you, though.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Dan says, and he is surprised to realise that he is being honest.

Sure, he could have done without being startled, but Jimmy is Jimmy and some secret part of Dan has missed him.

A beat of tension. There are so many words to say, and for a moment the reality of the situation catches up. This is Jimmy, talking, smiling at him. Dan pushes the thought away as soon as it arrives. He doesn’t even know the guy. Not really.

Jimmy is the one to break the silence, and he does so with a teasing grin.

“Can’t believe you chose Lucy over me.”

It’s a joke. He laughs and slaps Dan’s arm playfully when Dan’s eyes widen, mock-offended and exaggerated, concealing the way his stomach feels tight upon a mention of her name.

“Thought it was an ‘amicable break-up’,” Dan accuses him, pretending to be indignant just to hear Jimmy laugh again.

Jimmy rolls his eyes. “No such thing.”

Dan raises an eyebrow. He really doesn’t want to hear that.

Jimmy laughs again. This time, Dan joins in.

“I’m joking,” Jimmy supplies though he doesn’t have to. “But y’know. It’s complicated.”

“Yeah,” Dan says.

It only takes Jimmy glancing at his lips as they quiet down for Dan to regret saying he should leave. They couldn’t truly act on this thing before, but unless Jimmy has already found someone else… Technically, they could now. The realisation hits Dan and he doesn’t know whether he wants to run from it or indulge. He doesn’t know if it’s true - if it is allowed, or if his own desires as trying to play a trick on him.

Jimmy chooses for him. He takes one step closer and squeezes Dan’s arm again. He looks up at him with those pretty eyes and that easy smile and Dan takes a deep breath.

“I’ll let you leave,” Jimmy says, almost sounding apologetic. “But…”

He glances at Dan’s lips again. Dan swallows.

“Yeah,” is all he can reply.

Another moment of that intense silence, before Jimmy takes a step back and exhales hard through his nose. Dan holds his breath.

“Don’t be a stranger?” Jimmy asks with a hesitant smile.

“Yeah,” Dan nods. “Yeah, we should get in touch again.”

Jimmy chuckles. “You’re so cute.”

Dan blushes hard as he pushes his hands into his coat pockets and clenches them into fists, anything to stop a ridiculous giggle from bubbling out of his chest.

“Shut up,” Dan says instead and shakes his head. “I’ve got to go. But uh, text me sometime?”

“Sure will,” Jimmy agrees. “Cutie.”

Dan groans exaggeratedly, scrunching his face in disgust just to hide how good it feels. Jimmy laughs, and Dan turns around. He has already missed the tube, he has no reason to hurry, but Jimmy is being entirely too much for Dan to even dare be this close to him right now.

“Shut up,” Dan sing-songs as he starts walking away.

Jimmy laughs and Dan looks back. They wave at each other easily as good-bye.

When Dan finally gets on the tube that night, he already has a message from Jimmy on his phone.

_My place tomorrow?_

Dan doesn’t think before he responds with, _yes_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: If You Wanna by The Vaccines


	10. Chapter 10

The morning after, Dan thinks about his response a lot.

His shower is quick, and he drinks his coffee almost desperately. He doesn’t need it, as his nerves are already flying around enough to make him feel queasy. It’s not about Jimmy, really. It’s not about potentially hooking up. It’s about this third thing, this far off scary outcome of the situation, that Dan can’t help but run through his head.

Lucy didn’t get that serious with Jimmy. They lived together, but that was more about convenience than it was about not being able to spend time apart. London is expensive, they were young with low paying jobs; of course they would have rushed into moving in together. Lucy is not the type to be lovey-dovey or to dream up a life of marriage and children. When Dan found out she had a boyfriend in the beginning of their friendship, he was actually surprised.

Their breakup was amicable, but Jimmy said that it was complicated, too. Lucy didn’t talk much about it when it happened. She made her boundaries clear on that conversation. She had told the rest of them that she needed some time, and that she was sure they would become friends after a little while.

It has been a year, and Lucy still hasn’t really talked about it, and as far as everyone was concerned Jimmy had fucked off for good. Dan did a good job of not thinking about it, himself.

Lucy doesn’t take things very personally, Dan has noticed. It is a trait she doesn’t share with her brother. He still feels wrong, though, sneaking away to see her ex-boyfriend. Dan feels a rush inside, thinking about it. Something cold and sharp digging its way from the pit of his stomach up to the middle of his chest.

Dan pushes the thoughts away. If Jimmy texts him again today when he’s sober, Dan is going to agree to meet up. He can’t know if it was a drunken proposition, though, not really. For the time being he can’t know, so he has no reason to worry. He has no reason to feel guilty.

Dan looks at his thread in the Dye and White topic. Other fans are still discussing the images. Dan decides to join in on the conversation. Today he doesn’t care whether that makes him a faggot or not.

-

Jimmy texts him at six o’clock in the evening. Dan is watching youtube videos and getting worked up over some dude bro completely misinterpreting every plotpoint of Fall Whisperer. He knew it would make him angry the moment he saw the thumbnail, but he had been steadily running out of things to do to distract himself. Wanking a third time in one day would just be sad, even for him.

That anger skyrockets into fear the moment his phone buzzes.

_You still up to hang out?_

Dan already convinced himself that Jimmy wouldn’t be texting him back. He looks down at the phone, hesitant to reply. Three little dots beneath Jimmy’s message indicate that he is typing out a second message.

_Sorry if I seemed weird yesterday, was pissed. I guess I just kinda missed you. Didn’t mean to come off too strong. You’re a cool guy you know._

Dan takes a breath. There are too many thoughts and memories trying to push out of their steady hold at the back of his mind, never to come out for him to twist and turn again. A big part of him had been relieved when Jimmy broke up with Lucy. It meant he could, finally, put part of it out of his mind.

_Dw I didn’t get that vibe_ , Dan texts back.

Dan definitely got that vibe.

_When can I come over?_

Part of him thinks that Jimmy is just not going to respond again. He probably shouldn’t be staring at the screen and wait with baited breath for what a friend’s old ex will respond, anyway.

_I’m ordering take out so come now if you’re hungry!_

Dan swallows.

_Perfect. I’ll be right there. Address?_

Dan’s hands begin to shake. He pushes the thoughts away.

_Oh it’s the same place as before._

Jimmy isn’t joining in on any games that Dan so desperately wants to play. That cold feeling returns. He shouldn’t be doing this.

_Ok, I’ll be right over_

Jimmy responds with a string of emojis. Two dancing girls and a pizza slice. Then, another message.

_Lovely! x_

Dan shouldn’t be doing this. Regardless, he gets his coat and his shoes and is out the door quickly. He pretends to leave that cold feeling at home.

-

Somehow, Dan remembers very clearly which route to take. He knows that the tube only needs to pass two stops, that Jimmy lives conveniently close to the station. He knows that Jimmy feels guilty ordering in take-out when he lives close enough to get pizza only a short walk from his building. He knows that Jimmy feels like he shouldn’t complain about being short on money when he willingly pays an extra fee for his food to be delivered.

Dan can repress a lot of things. He can not think about them for over a year, apparently. Now that he allows some of them to come back, they are as clear as they were a year ago, and paired with that same bad taste in his mouth. Dan shakes his head and presses the buzzer to Jimmy’s flat once he arrives at the door. Those feelings are still at home, he decides.They didn’t follow him here, where they won’t do any good.

The door opens after only a couple seconds, and Dan makes his way inside. The lift is broken, just like last time. Dan winces. He speeds up the stairs. Getting out of breath and feeling the ache in his calves feels better than to think about that.

Jimmy opens the door the moment that Dan gets to his floor. Dan freezes, for a second. Jimmy is wearing his green York University hoodie and grey jogging bottoms. His hair is messy and his face looks tired. It’s as if they are recreating the scene on purpose. Though, today Jimmy’s tired eyes are probably due to a hangover rather than heartache. At least, Dan hopes so.

“Hi,” Jimmy says.

He smiles. There is nothing tired or broken in his voice. He is steady and those green eyes are shimmering in a way that makes Dan almost feel entranced. 

Dan’s legs start moving on their own. He walks with a purpose he hadn’t noticed was present inside of him, some sort of determination that almost scares him. He really has left the cold and the sick at home. Right now, he just wants, and he feels capable of taking.

Jimmy doesn’t say a word. He takes a step back as Dan approaches him, closing the door behind himself. In the street they could stare at each other for ages, but in this flat it only takes one glance. 

One glance at Dan’s lips, and a flutter to those long dark eyelashes, and Dan grabs the front of Jimmy’s shirt and pushes their lips together.

Jimmy meets Dan so easily. He takes that nervous strength and turns it into something soft. His hands move up into his hair, but he doesn’t grab. They simply massage him, waiting for Dan’s grip to loosen and for his breath to catch. Once he does, Jimmy gently pushes his tongue between the seam of Dan’s lips and Dan may be pathetic and embarrassing, but once he feels Jimmy’s open mouth and warm breath on his skin he moans like the touch-starved, lonely man that he is.

Jimmy breathes harder as a result. He liked that desperation last time, too.

At that, the doorbell rings, causing them to jump. Dan’s heart rushes, barely seeing as he stares at Jimmy, taken out of the moment.

“The pizza,” Jimmy says.

It’s barely voiced, barely there. Dan blinks. He couldn’t care less about pizza right now.

“Right,” Dan nods with a half-smile in return and moves out of the way for Jimmy to get his wallet and open the door.

Dan takes off his coat and throws it on the back of the sofa as he walks into the flat. It’s larger than Dan’s, but it is more run down. There are cracks on the walls and an ever-present threat of rats and mice lurking in the corners. Maybe Jimmy got that problem under control in the past year.

The sofa is new, though. It isn’t a hand-me-down like the one that they were scared to sit on last time, no, Dan can tell this is a recent purchase. Grey and a bit hard, like it hasn’t been properly broken in yet. Dan eyes the crack on the wall opposite him as he sits down. Between two large windows, connecting them, with depth and girth that makes Dan think it’s trying to break through the wall to create one large window.

Dan’s breath catches. He thought the exact same thing last time. Jimmy had laughed when he told him.

The curtains are drawn, covering the windows, but Jimmy’s flat has a good view unlike the brick wall Dan’s windows face. Dan decides to think that the curtains are drawn because of Jimmy’s supposed hangover and not because of Dan’s arrival.

He hears Jimmy close the door, loud and booming, but the sound of the lock doesn’t echo this time. Maybe Jimmy just has more stuff now, restraining the full potential of the acoustics. Or maybe there wasn’t really an echo last time. Dan could have imagined it.

“I hope you’re alright with pepperoni?”

Jimmy sits down next to him, places the box on the coffee table, and opens it. Dan looks back up on the crack between the windows.

“Love it,” Dan says.

He risks a look at Jimmy then, and what he sees is warmth. He smiles with such a magnetic ease, Dan has no choice but to smile back.

Jimmy leans forward and grabs a slice and gestures for Dan to help himself. The queasiness in his stomach has settled for now. It’s back at home, exactly where Dan left it.

“How’s your hangover?” Dan asks as he sits back and takes a bite.

Jimmy chuckles around his mouthful.

“Not bad,” he says once he swallows. “I exaggerated a bit when I said I was proper pissed last night. I didn’t get past a buzz.”

Dan’s grin fades. The curtains are closed and he is in the same situation he always ends up in. Hidden away from view. Like every time he connects with someone in this way, it ends up as a shameful memory to agonise over later.

It doesn’t matter. Dan puts a smile back on his face and pushes the rest away. It doesn’t have to mean that much. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

“Listen,” Jimmy says after a few moments of eating in silence. “I know this probably feels… weird. For you.”

Dan makes sure to not show any reaction on his face. He waits.

“You know.” Jimmy gesticulates, crosses his legs, his posture suddenly drowned in uncertainty. “You’re still mates with Lucy, yeah?”

Dan’s face betrays him at that. He can’t control the inhale upon hearing her name in this context. Jimmy regains some confidence.

“Yeah,” Dan says, though his reaction spoke for him. “It… Yeah. It’s a bit weird.”

He puts his third slice back in the box. He can’t eat more.

“Doesn’t have to be, though,” Jimmy tries, mimicking Dan by putting away his slice as well.

They turn towards each other, both with one elbow resting on the back of the sofa as they look into each other’s eyes. Dan almost doesn’t want to fully look into his. There’s something so young and bright about them, something that Dan wants to grab and not let go of. He will have to let go, at some point. He always does.

“No?” Dan asks, quirking an eyebrow, as if amused by the idea that their situation is close to normal, or even right.

Jimmy smiles in return, further pushing the veil over it, desperate to cling to some shared delusion.

But then he sighs, and some of that flirty playfulness fades from his expression as he fiddles with one of the strings on his hoodie. He looks down.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I… How is she?”

He looks back up, those bright young eyes suddenly sad and aged and broken.

Dan puts his hand on top of Jimmy’s, and takes hold. Jimmy’s hand is so small in his. He can’t stand to see that sadness. He wants to remove it as quickly as it appeared.

“She’s doing well,” Dan says. “She’s great, actually.”

Jimmy nods. His bottom lip quivers as he squeezes his eyes shut.

“Hey,” Dan says softly.

“Sorry,” Jimmy says, shaking his head. “I just…”

He takes his hand back to cover his face. A few deep breaths that Dan can only wait during. If Dan were braver, more emotionally coherent, maybe he would have dared to pull Jimmy into a hug. But he remains sat awkwardly across from him on the sofa, simply waiting for Jimmy to pull himself back from whatever is hurting him, wishing he dared to help.

Jimmy puts his hands into his lap revealing reddened eyes, tears lining their shape.

“I never stopped loving her, you know?”

Dan swallows.

“I… don’t, actually,” he whispers. “She hasn’t really talked about the breakup.”

Jimmy nods, resigned to something Dan can’t name.

“Yeah,” he says. “I thought so.”

Dan wants to be brave. He puts a hand on top of Jimmy’s on his lap and scoots closer, intimately aware that he could be setting himself up for rejection.

There’s none to be found. Jimmy leans against him as their shoulders brush and looks up at him with a naked yearning that Dan feels undeserving of. He can’t provide the comfort that Jimmy really needs.

“You know, I went through something similar,” Dan says, “with Haley. It’s hard.”

Jimmy hums in response, turning his palms up. Dan draws stripes over them with the tips of his fingers.

“Have _you_ talked to her at all, since?” Dan asks.

Jimmy mumbles something incoherent, before he clears his throat.

“Yeah, we kind of update each other on our lives, I guess,” he says. “It’s just not the same. She was my best friend.”

Jimmy slumps, resting his head on Dan’s shoulder. It feels good. He can feel Jimmy’s breath puff out slowly against his neck.

“Hm,” Dan hums. “I know.”

He doesn’t know what else to say to that. It feels too delicate to really open up, or try to fix, even if he wants to. Dan has a tendency to push himself into situations and issues that don’t belong to him. That he has no power to really fix. It has put him in the middle of things he shouldn’t have, too many times. As a result, he has a hard time telling the difference between what is helpful and what is needlessly taking on the weight of someone else’s pain.

This seems like something to keep some distance from. Jimmy is something to keep distance from, really.

Jimmy huffs another warm breath, and Dan can feel it between his legs.

“You still have that neck thing?” Jimmy chuckles.

He turns his head to softly mouth at the side of Dan’s neck. Dan shudders, body doused in delicious tingling. Jimmy scratches his teeth against him, his tongue poking out to leave a warm wetness on Dan’s skin.

Dan pulls away with a laugh, blood rushing to his crotch so fast he has to uncross his legs lest it start to hurt.

Jimmy glances down, the playfulness returning.

“Jimmy,” Dan breathes.

It’s half-warning, half-invitation. Dan can’t even tell what the intent of it is, but Jimmy only heard the invitation. He leans back in, catching Dan’s mouth with his own, as he feels the hardness between Dan’s legs.

Dan hums against his mouth, breath catching.

“I want to make you feel good,” Jimmy says, voice low.

“Okay,” Dan chokes back.

Jimmy takes to the floor, kneels between Dan’s legs, and unzips his jeans. 

Dan could say no and get out of this situation if he wanted to. He could easily not make this another mistake, and not make it hard to talk to or even look at Lucy the next time they see each other. But Jimmy’s mouth is so warm and so wet, and those noises he makes as he slides Dan’s cock down his throat sound as good as they feel.

Jimmy never cheated on Lucy, Dan reminds himself. They committed no crimes while they were committed to one another. There were only exchanged glances, stolen moments of secret understanding, as Jimmy tried his best to deprive himself of what he really wanted. The guilt comes from something deeper, something that is difficult enough to vocalise that Dan hasn’t even told Susanne. Like the mere existence of Dan, and his audacity to look at his friend’s boyfriend that way, pushed Jimmy to do something he wouldn’t have done otherwise. No matter what his place really is or was in their relationship, that feeling remains. Deep-seated and cold, creating an utter disgust with himself that he can’t shake.

Right now, that feeling is back at home in Dan’s flat. Not here. Not in Jimmy’s apartment as Dan steadily gets harder and harder, desperate noises forcing their way out of his lungs as Jimmy teases his tongue over his cock, misplaced kisses and grabby hands at Dan’s shirt until the tension eventually snaps into waves of pleasure as he comes.

It never feels like this with anyone else.

Dan kisses Jimmy on the mouth even if his chin is dripping with come, and something about that feels romantic. It even feels romantic when Jimmy gets so desperate for relief himself that he pushes Dan’s head down between his legs a bit too hard. That horny but genuine apology as Dan makes a noise in surprise, which Dan puts a stop to the moment he mouths at Jimmy’s dick through his trousers.

It feels romantic, Dan decides. He wants Jimmy’s come down his throat. He wants Jimmy to feel good, too. He wants something other than the cold, lonely ache back at home, where his only distraction is found online with people that are already paired off and would do just as well without him there.

Jimmy does come down Dan’s throat, and even if it tastes a bit weird Dan takes it in stride. It’s worth it for being called amazing, for being kissed like he matters.

They can make out on the sofa for a little bit longer, reeling from how wrong it is and how right it feels. Dan has to go home at some point, but not yet. For now, Jimmy is all he feels and hears and tastes. It doesn’t have to mean anything, at the same time as Dan allows it to mean everything. Just for a little while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thank you so much for reading. I just wanted to pop in with a message real quick.
> 
> I made a playlist for this fic! It's pretty much what the music soundtrack would be for this fic if it were a film or a tv show: [**[listen on spotify]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)  
>  From now on I'll put a new song on it for every new chapter, as every song has some significance to each chapter in chronological order. Enjoy!
> 
> The song for this chapter is BITE by Troye Sivan


	11. Chapter 11

Dan doesn’t feel the cold when he enters his flat the next morning.

Jimmy subtly encouraged him to stay in bed before he went to work, but Dan couldn’t stay. The moment the door closed behind Jimmy something made itself known within Dan that could launch him into panic. Dan doesn’t panic anymore, and besides, he didn’t bring his meds to Jimmy’s flat.

It’s not like he is on a strict time schedule for taking them. As long as he takes them in the morning, the effects stay in place as they should. Still, as the adrenaline rushed through his veins, spurred on by the fear of panic, he convinced himself that he would somehow go out of control if he didn’t get to his place to take them as quickly as possible.

His schedule is off, anyway. The world is a bit askew.

Dan showered at Jimmy’s last night, instead of in the morning like he usually does. He didn’t get his night time snack. Instead, they went back to the pizza after fooling around a second time. Dan didn’t get much sleep either, but at least he is fairly used to that.

Dan’s schedule isn’t meant to be constricting. It is put in place to put some order to the chaos, to make sure he actually does something with his day. At this point, Susanne describes it as an outline to follow. She has already sensed that it has started to cause some anxiety within Dan rather than make him feel more at peace like it’s supposed to do.

But as usual when something finally works to control the chaos, Dan is going to find a way to be unhealthy about it. It isn’t much unlike the desperate way he clung to his achievements as a child. Or his tendency to cut people off the moment they get too close, or the moment he gets a bad feeling about them. It’s all about controlling that uncontrollable thing within him, that thing that nudges him to be self destructive.

It is useless to care so much about that stupid schedule when last night was just that; self destruction.

Not that it wasn’t fun, or exciting, or didn’t feel good. Not that Jimmy isn’t a good person that absolutely doesn’t mean to harm Dan in any way. What really is destructive about it, which Dan knows intimately and yet repeats the same mistakes, is that it brings about an onslaught of complicated feelings towards his personal relationships. Jimmy’s life in intertwined with Lucy’s, and Dan’s involvement with him could potentially hurt her. Not because she has any ownership over either of them, but Dan doesn’t want to hurt her. She hurt enough when Jimmy came out to her, and even that is something Dan feels responsible for.

What it all really comes down to is this secret keeping that Dan hates, just as much as he craves it.

He can’t make sense of that craving. If it is a comfort to live life ambiguously, or if it is cowardice, or if there is familiarity in it after being raised to shut his mouth. The most likely reason is that Dan is too selfish and isolated to ever truly bring another person into all the strange corners of his mind and all the guilt he carries heavy in his chest.

Dan feels out of place. He takes his meds and sits down at his pc after putting on the coffee to brew. It isn’t exactly like most days, and try as he might there won’t be any stopping the thoughts from the night before. What he can do is distract himself. He can jump back into that new saved game, where everything is familiar.

Just as he is about to boot up the game, he notices that there is a new patch waiting to be installed to Fall Whisperer. Dan lets it update as he goes online to look at the patch notes. As usual, IrregularSymbol has tweeted a link to a blog post breaking the update down to a few bullet points.

The general compatibility fixes are noted at the top, as well as some multiplayer and server updates that makes Dan raise an eyebrow. Apparently, some members will have access to creating larger servers with more people. That was only possible using mods before, and those have been known to crash games and cause issues so severe that Dan has frequently advised people against using them since the servers and multiplayer mode first launched.

The last note makes Dan furrow his eyebrows in confusion.

_Squawk_

Dan takes a screenshot before he refreshes the page. That must be a mistake. It is kind of funny, but definitely a mistake.

When the page loads again, that final word remains.

Dan takes to Twitter, where most people he follows obviously haven’t taken much note of that last word. He reckons they saw a bunch of technical stuff and decided to nope out before they got to the end. Seagull and TriangleNoses haven’t tweeted since the patch came out, and just as Dan as is about to go to the forum to see if anyone has talked about it, he notices one tweet that all of his server teammates have retweeted.

**dwhitefan** : Excuse me, but where the fuck are Dye and White?

Dan clicks on the tweet to see the replies. There are droves of them, as if the entire fandom has decided to make one long twitter thread. There seems to be a common denominator in each message: No one can find Dye and White.

A few people are saying they’re in their games just fine, but given the replies to those tweets they seem to have just forgotten to update their games. Dan rolls his eyes.

**achromatic_bot** : what’s going on?

He has opened the server group chat, which Morgan named the Rainbow Team for some reason. Dan feels on edge, like he is in some sort of fever dream brought on by everything from last night. There have been surprises in the game before, but none like these. There hasn’t been actual removal of characters before this.

When no one responds quickly enough, which to Dan in this state would be within seconds, he starts up the game. He hurries into his oldest save, the second one he ever made. He hasn’t been on it for a while as he has completed everything already. It feels important to use this one when something happens, though. He needs his original character to experience these things first, even if that is kind of stupid and doesn’t make much sense.

He gets a token from his inventory which immediately takes him to the far off forest, where Dye and White’s cabin is. He goes to their house, and takes a look inside.

Everything looks the same. The colourful mugs on the dining table, the blue and green bed sheets, the odd, indistinguishable picture on the wall, the pink refrigerator. White’s bows and arrow are in one corner, with Dye’s violin next to it. Everything is in perfect order. Only, at this time of the day, Dye and White are usually in the cabin.

Dan goes outside to search for clues. He finds one in the mailbox outside of their house.

_I could have sworn someone used to live here._

An anxious rush starts in Dan’s chest. He knows it’s a bit stupid, but he can’t help feeling out of place. At that, he gets a response in the group chat.

**falldelight** : NO IDEA BUT I’M FREAKING OUT

**achromatic_bot** : did you see the mailbox?

**falldelight** : ????

**achromatic_bot** : there’s a message that reads “I could have sworn someone used to live here”

**ripewhisperer** : I’m kind of scared tbh

**squigglyfw** : seagull tweeted!!!

Just as Mason sends the message, Dan gets the notification. He clicks on it and it takes him to the tweet, simply saying: “Squawk.”

Dan bursts out laughing. Of course.

**achromatic_bot** : @Seagull do you think this is a game, sir?

Most of the replies are in full panic mode. Dan goes to Seagull’s profile. His twitter bio has changed from his old “I wrote a game and now people won’t leave my nest?” with a link to Fall Whisperer’s official website, to that ominous “Squawk”.

The group chat is in full panic mode, too. Dan has to mute it. They are talking too much and asking questions that no one can answer yet. Dan would take the route to the forum to find all the clues that other people have already found, but part of him wants to disappear from all the frenzy just to explore every little corner of the world in Fall Whisperer to find them on his own.

Did they announce this patch? Dan doesn’t think so. He hasn’t been as involved lately, but he is usually always the first one to notice when things are going down. His mind hasn’t really been more occupied than usual. He has kept his mental health distance, but that doesn’t normally stop him from keeping up anyway. Maybe it all went down during the night, when Dan was at Jimmy’s and he turned his notifications off. It is just his luck.

What Dan can gather so far is that it all relates back to Dye and White. The sketches that TriangleNoses posted, the patch, and Seagull being an absolute troll with his stupid squawks. The last thing is mostly just his usual way of doing things, but when Seagull is involved it is almost always something regarding those two characters.

Looking in the garden or in the cave is useless, but Dan goes looking there anyway. Seagull isn’t one to go for the obvious, but part of Dan hopes that this is so obvious that others won’t go looking. Dan can’t make sense of it, anyway. For all he knows Dye and White have gone into the Shadow Realm, and that is not a place that the players have access to after the storyline finishes. Right?

Dan considers it as he moves through Dye’s garden, the little cabin he no longer lives in, but the rows and rows of flowers and fruit trees and herbs he still takes good care of. He doesn’t exactly need to anymore, his character has developed beyond that, but then at one point Seagull did say that sometimes doing things out of habit can be comforting.

There is nothing of value to find in the garden or in the cave, Dan concludes after checking everything he can for the better part of an hour. Obviously. Seagull could have at least left a clue, or some type of indicator. Sure, only the casual player would look in the most obvious places first, but Dan can’t tell what Seagull actually thinks is obvious any more.

**ripewhisperer** : this is useless

Dan tabs out of the game and opens his DMs in fullscreen. He could spend hours looking, but he doesn’t obsess like that anymore.

**achromatic_bot** : no luck?

**ripewhisperer** : no elusive messages here. Idk people are convinced it’s at the old portal.

**achromatic_bot** : i take it no one has found anything there anyway?

**ripewhisperer** : nope. But we may have to finish a pattern of actions or something. Seagull loves that shit.

**achromatic_bot** : true, i just feel like he’s hiding it in plain sight

**ripewhisperer** : don’t tell me you went looking in the cave

Dan chuckles.

**achromatic_bot** : and the garden! don’t shame me

**ripewhisperer** : weren’t you the one that kept talking to me about the degradation fic mason wrote that one night? you’re supposed to be into it lol

**achromatic_bot** : you know we don’t talk about that stuff AFTER jamie jfc

**ripewhisperer** : LMAO it’s so easy to rile you up

They keep talking for a while. It’s just like old times, when Jamie was the only person Dan could stand to talk to in the fandom. Before people started picking favourites and they gained followers and things got weird. It’s nice. Jamie can always make him laugh.

Dan doesn’t realise he forgot to eat until his phone buzzes. His stomach rumbles as he opens up Will’s message.

_You wanna come over for dinner on Sat? H+L are coming_

The cold seeps into Dan’s skin. It was here, this whole time, but inside his bubble online Dan was able to remain unaffected by it for at least a few hours. 

Now, it doesn’t come gradually. Instead, the sickening guilt he left here swallows him whole in a single bite. He would have ended up at the worst of it at some point, regardless, but now there’s a sort of shock mixed in that makes it feel worse.

Dan gets up and wanders. The walls suffocate him but he keeps walking in the circle pattern he so often ends up in. He can’t go outside. Lucy is only on the floor below him, and she could find him anywhere. She could walk into his flat right now if she wanted to. 

Fuck, did Jimmy tell her about him? Did he lie when he said they only communicate at a distance now? Was this a test, set out by Lucy, in order to prove what a fucked up person Dan is?

The questions are a jumbled mess that Dan can pick apart and disprove with ease. They still cling, though. There are tricks to settle an approaching panic attack and Dan has tried every single one. He has yet to find one that removes the impact. He does as he has been told and allows the thoughts come and he questions them, because they are paranoid and ridiculous. He sits on the floor and picks out everything he can see, to keep mindful. He puts his hands palm down on the floor and describes the feeling of it to himself in his head.

The impact remains. It hurts.

All he can see, feel and hear is anxious cold guilt.

-

_”Dan.”_

_Lucy puts a hand on his wrist to stop him. The kitchen is quiet as Will and Rob make their way to their living room._

_Fuck._

_Dan can’t look at her yet._

_”Yeah?” he asks._

_He turns his body towards her. The sympathy he has for her is not put on. She hasn’t responded to messages or come into work since Jimmy moved, and Dan may be self-centred but his worry for her has nothing to do with himself._

_He wants her to know what he did. He wants her to scream at him._

_Lucy looks up at him. She never looks her size otherwise, but right now the height difference between them is apparent just in the way she has to tilt her head up to reveal those sad eyes that Dan wants to avoid._

_He hasn’t asked, Dan realises. He hasn’t asked her how she is doing. Lucy is so strong, so independent, she always pulls through. Talking to her at a difficult time usually results in a snappy tone and a judgmental glare._

_There is none of that now. There is no guard between Dan and the weight of Lucy’s pain._

_”Did you know?”_

_Lucy’s voice is a mix of resignation and some misplaced hopefulness._

_Dan blinks. His lips tremble._

_”Yeah.”_

_The pain feels deeper for a second before Lucy schools her expression into what Dan is used to seeing. She nods tightly, walks past him, and laughs at Will being sat on Rob’s lap._

_Meanwhile, there is an unread text message from Jimmy on Dan’s phone._

-

They didn’t do anything when they were together, Dan repeats to himself as he falls apart on the floor once again and the memory he otherwise manages to suffocate goes on loop inside his mind. Nothing was said. They didn’t touch past greeting hugs and friendly pats on the back.

But one week after Jimmy moved out Dan made his way to Jimmy’s flat as if to make up for all the tension they hadn’t been allowed to break before.

Dan is about to text him and once again tell him that they should end this before it begins. He can be a one night stand again. He doesn’t have experience with being much else. Dan isn’t worth much else.

A knock on the door.

Dan puts the phone down and a different kind of anxiety makes itself known inside of him. Dan approaches the door, peeks through the blurry window.

Jimmy.

Dan pulls him inside so quickly he almost feels dizzy, the fear of being found out stuck in his throat. He closes and locks the door with force. The surprise on Jimmy’s face feels sharp, and Dan’s mouth hangs open, dumbfounded at the audacity Jimmy has to come here unannounced.

“You know she lives right below me, yeah?” Dan spits out, the extent of his panic threatening to snap into something terrifying and unknown.

Jimmy inhales, preparing to speak. Dan isn’t finished.

“You know she could fucking---”

Dan’s voice breaks.

He looks away. Jimmy doesn’t feel real right now. Nothing does. The tears rolling down his cheeks are, though. His shaking shoulders are his only tether to reality. The stupid whimpers coming from him as he cries and the desire to appear strong regardless of how removed Dan feels from the situation are, to his dismay, real. Everything else is dull and faded and far away.

Jimmy comes back into view when he puts two strong hands on the sides of Dan’s face and forces him to look him in the eyes. Dan’s mental focus locks on him. He shouldn’t find comfort in him, but then-

His eyes are still so fucking warm and kind.

“What?” Jimmy asks softly. “What could she do?”

Dan shakes his head. “She could see you.”

Jimmy rub Dan’s cheeks with his thumbs, drying his tears. The pressure of Jimmy’s hold, the presence in his eyes, both enable Dan to breathe again.

“I don’t care,” Jimmy says. “I wanted to see you.”

_I care_ , Dan wants to say. But as Jimmy looks at his lips and his eyebrows quirk like they used to when him and Lucy were together and he’d steal a glance at Dan that Dan tried to convince himself was not inappropriate, he stops caring.

Did Dan’s sympathy ever extend to her in the first place, or was it his own subconscious way of deluding himself into feeling like somewhat of a decent person?

Dan lets the question pass through his mind, into the back, away with the rest of his guilt and shame. For now, Jimmy remains his focus. For now, nothing else exists. He allows himself, for a moment, to not judge his actions and thoughts as good or bad.

Dan is the one that leans in, and Jimmy meets him in a wet kiss that should be disgusting.

Romantic, Dan convinces himself.

They make their way to Dan’s bed. Fall Whisperer is still open on his monitor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Paralysed by SOHN [[spotify playlist]](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	12. Chapter 12

In the wake of his orgasm, Dan manages to smile.

Jimmy is still on top of him. He leans down and kisses him, so softly that Dan almost weeps. He feels steadier, now. He can allow for nothing to exist outside of Jimmy’s body and noises and heat. He doesn’t want to know what exists outside of it.

Jimmy rolls off of him and stretches. The bed fits them both fine, but Dan still curls in on his side to close the distance he usually craves.

“Was I your first?”

Jimmy snorts as he looks back at Dan.

“Mate.”

Dan rolls his eyes.

“I meant, was I your first guy?”

Jimmy’s smile remains in his eyes as his gaze wanders.

“No,” he says.

“Really?” Dan asks.

Jimmy nudges his shoulder playfully.

“Ouch. Was I that bad the first time?”

“I didn’t mean that,” Dan groans.

He rolls onto his back, pretending to be turned off to the conversation. Jimmy just curls in on him instead, as if it’s a dance. Dan doesn’t dance, but if he did he’d definitely prefer to do it lying down. Naked. With a fit guy who wants to fuck him.

“Why'd you ask?”

“I dunno. I’m curious. We haven’t ever really talked much.”

Dan would feel self conscious being this candid otherwise, but Jimmy was just inside of him. Things can’t get more candid than that.

“When I was with Lucy-”

“Eye-fucking doesn’t count as talking,” Dan blurts out.

Jimmy bursts out laughing and wheezes until his face turns red. It is easy to join in right now, late in the night when nothing they say or do has to matter.

“Who was he? And when?” Dan asks once Jimmy regains his composure.

Jimmy smiles as he thinks back on it. He has changed a lot since last year. Last year, talking was off the table. He was almost aggressive in the way he pinned Dan down and lapped him up. Dan had loved it, but there was something broken within that love. Something was missing. 

He prefers this version of Jimmy. The sweeter and happier and more content version that somehow manages to control Dan’s chaos.

“Mate from uni,” Jimmy says. “Experimentation that lead to even deeper denial. You know how it is.”

Dan smiles sadly. Jimmy shrugs.

“We’re still friends,” Jimmy says. “I mean, we weren’t for a while, but after I came out I reached out to him.”

“Really?”

The fact that people actually reach out to each other in times of need is astounding to Dan, still.

“Yeah,” Jimmy says, some confusion flickering past his eyes at Dan’s surprise. “I knew he’d moved to London. I was all alone. I needed help, and he was the only out gay guy I knew.”

It stings. Of course confiding in an _out_ gay guy would be more helpful. Somebody that has their shit together. Dan couldn’t be that for him.

Dan decides to keep asking questions. There’s no room for jealousy in their bubble.

“How’d it go?”

“It went great,” Jimmy says. “He was in a relationship at the time, so it wasn’t about anything… sexual, I guess. He wasn’t really like that back when we used to fool around anyway, though. He’s always just been such a great guy.”

Dan hums. Jimmy’s life went on when Dan tried to pretend that he didn’t exist. It seems strange to him, like Jimmy should have been put on pause while Dan figured out how to feel about him. Dan didn’t figure anything out, though. He repressed it. If it were up to him, Jimmy would have been kept on pause for the rest of his life.

Jimmy is a person, just like Dan, with family and friends and everything that exists outside of the sex they have. He’s a good person, at that. Too good.

“I’m happy for you,” Dan says, then cringes at himself.

Jimmy laughs.

“I mean it,” Dan chuckles. “It worked out for you, yeah?”

Jimmy kisses him with an ease that Dan isn’t used to. Like he’s just allowed to, because he wants to, and not for any other reason. It could even be described as affectionate. Dan blushes at the very idea.

“Dunno,” Jimmy says. “I dated for a bit. Came out to my family. It went okay, but…”

Jimmy looks right into Dan’s eyes as he pauses. Dan waits.

“It was kind of lonely, I suppose.”

“Why?” Dan asks.

Jimmy had that old mate, and a whole world of repressed urges to finally give in to. That doesn’t sound very lonely.

Jimmy smiles, something almost patronising in his eyes. Like Dan doesn’t truly understand what it’s like. Like Dan doesn’t know that loneliness exists even when there are other people around. Like he doesn’t know that it feels heavier when other people are around.

Dan knows. He knows it intimately. He just never would have imagined Jimmy does, too.

“I think I missed you, a bit,” Jimmy says.

Dan frowns, dumbfounded. Jimmy laughs as he leans back in, brushing his lips against Dan’s as his breath huffs onto his mouth.

Dan closes the remaining distance and takes hold of Jimmy’s hair. It doesn’t mean what it sounds like, he decides. Dan isn’t a real person to Jimmy either. He was Jimmy’s only outlet for a while, even if that only came down to some mildly suggestive looks. Dan knows what that feels like. So little means so much when you’re trying to decide if you’re ready to be the person you’ve hidden away for years.

“How stupid,” Dan says when he pulls away.

“You’re stupid,” Jimmy grins.

“Exactly.”

Jimmy smiles, eyes so hopeful and sweet that Dan wants to run.

He grabs a hold of Dan’s hand and puts it against his lips. He looks up at Dan through long eyelashes. He is so pretty. Too pretty.

The sweetness turns into heat in seconds, and before Dan knows it Jimmy has rolled back on top of him. His kisses are hungry and Dan spreads his legs, eager to be filled back up.

-

If it were last year, Dan would have put an end to it by now.

Last year, it only took one and a half times for him to hate the guilt that came with Jimmy’s pretty eyes and eager hands.

Now, it’s flipped. The guilt is going to be there anyway. Dan wants the good that accompanies it, because otherwise there is only the sinking feeling of being wrong, of being trapped by his own actions. At least now someone looks at Dan like he is something to want. Dan has no idea what Jimmy finds in him that he can’t find in anyone else. Any guy would feel lucky to sleep with him. Dan, on the other hand, is a mess of conflicting feelings that he tries to hold back.

But Jimmy keeps coming over, or he asks Dan to come over.

Dan says no half the times. When he is at home, with his pc, he loses himself in the game and all the new clues people have been finding. They aren’t close to solving the mystery yet, and Dan reckons that some of the clues don’t mean anything. Given the few cheeky responses Seagull has been giving people with questions about it by now, he seems to enjoy the chaos he has created. The forum is filled with people focusing on the negative, claiming that it isn’t fun anymore. Dan thinks it is fun. He thinks that Seagull is pretty hilarious. He kind of wants him to reply to him again.

It works best when Jimmy comes over unannounced. Dan might not like it, but Jimmy is for some reason adamant on them seeing each other several times a week.

Dan wants it. He wants it so bad. They have their own little world.

Jimmy makes him come so fucking hard.

Is that connection? Is that love? Is that what all the fuss is about?

Tonight, Jimmy feels different. He doesn’t hesitate. He pins Dan underneath him and pushes inside him before they’ve even fully removed their clothing. It feels different. It feels fucking amazing. Jimmy is rock hard and panting into his ear. He slides in and out of Dan slowly, but each thrust is deep, strong. Dan is often too self conscious while having sex to fully give into the feeling, but right now he finds he can’t stop himself from doing so.

He tilts his head back against the mattress and wraps his legs around Jimmy’s hips to push him in impossibly deeper and they move together in perfect rhythm, until a sudden jerk to Jimmy’s hips changes the pace. It almost hurts, like something sharp, but it sends tingles down to Dan’s toes and he makes a noise from somewhere in his chest, loud like a yelp.

Dan can’t help but laugh. He covers his face with his hands as his face turns red, and he starts to shake.

“Sorry,” he manages to say through ridiculous giggles.

It is the least sexy thing in the world. Jimmy grabs a hold of Dan’s wrists and pulls his hands from his face. When he stares down at him Dan manages to really look into those bright green eyes and see something he never has before.

It startles him. His smile fades and his breath hitches. Jimmy leans back down, pushing his mouth onto Dan’s until it opens. He starts moving again, like before, only quicker. Dan groans, trying his hardest not to make that weird noise again, but the longer they go the harder it gets. When Jimmy starts to stroke his cock it gets near impossible.

“Jimmy,” Dan moans. “Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy.”

He grabs onto the bed sheets and twists his head, feeling it all build up inside and feeling terrified to give in to any of it.

“What?” Jimmy asks, never stopping, even scratching his teeth against Dan’s neck directly after.

He is playing a dangerous game right now. Dan doesn’t know whether he likes it or not.

“I-- It’s too--,” Dan doesn’t know what the fuck he wants to communicate to him.

Jimmy keeps going.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “Whatever it is. Give in to it.”

Dan moans helplessly, feeling it build back up when Jimmy pulls all the way out and thrusts right back inside him. He’s so open for it, and that is, for some reason, the sexiest thing imaginable right now.

“It feels so good,” Dan gasps.

“I know,” Jimmy chokes out, almost like a laugh, incredulous.

That _something_ buzzes between them again. It makes Dan feel like an outsider looking in, removed from whatever is being created. Like he has somehow tricked Jimmy into it. Like none of it is real.

Dan gets pulled back into it when his body can’t take anymore delicious deep thrusts or tight strokes, when Dan doesn’t even need to think about anything to get there. It just happens, and the world is only made up by the scent of sex and Jimmy’s firm body moving against his own and that is better than anything Dan could imagine.

That noise gets pulled out of him again when he comes, so _loud_ and desperate and horny and embarrassing. Dan laughs and hides himself again, but he feels easier now. It’s not as shameful. Jimmy pushes Dan’s hands off his face again and pulls out of him.

Jimmy doesn’t smile. Dan looks at the stubble on his jawline and the pout of his bottom lip. Then hands grab onto the sides of Dan’s face and wet lips move softly with his. Dan makes another noise, something quieter. He isn’t the type to make noise without meaning to, but right now every touch regardless of how slow or light pushes those sounds out of him, reminding him of where he is and what he is doing.

Dan finds Jimmy’s dick where it’s still hard and poking against Dan’s tummy. He wraps his hand around it, but Jimmy stops him. He takes hold of Dan’s wrist and places it at the back of his head instead. Without breaking the kiss, Jimmy moves them up the bed with ease, from the edge they’ve been scooting down. Once they’re in a better position, Dan moves his hand down again, and Jimmy stops him all the same.

“Jimmy?” Dan muffles out.

Jimmy is so taken with it. He is still kissing him, going from soft to hard to soft again, like he can’t get enough and wants to try every single method. He pulls back when Dan tries to speak a second time, and he blinks as if he wasn’t aware that they are still two people, capable of communicating through something other than touch.

“What?” Jimmy asks, dumbfounded.

It’s cute. Dan manages a smile. And yet the part of him that feels removed, that outsider looking in, cringes slightly at just how genuine Jimmy is being.

“Do you want to..?” Dan hesitates, stroking the hair at the back of Jimmy’s head.

Jimmy gets it, though. He shakes his head.

“I’m fine,” he says. “I just wanna…”

He kisses him again. Something drums up inside of Dan and it hurts. Something is happening between them and Dan can’t feel it without wincing. Jimmy cares about him. Jimmy likes him. Jimmy wants to have sex with him even if he doesn’t come. The last part is what really brings forth a deep seated fear.

Dan moves his head to the side and Jimmy takes it as permission to kiss down his neck. Dan doesn’t want it. Dan needs out.

“Jimmy, stop.”

Jimmy stops immediately. Dan feels too fucked up to be grateful for it.

Dan looks up at him even if he doesn’t want to. His mouth pulls tight as he watches the confusion settle on Jimmy’s expression, pulling him back to reality, and that hurts just as much.

“I’m sorry,” Dan says.

Dan has no chance to stop it before it happens. He gasps, his throat goes tight, and his body starts to shake. The world spins around and his vision goes from staring up at Jimmy’s face, too close to his, to that fisheye lens view he has of them from the corner of the room. All of it feels too cold and too hot at the same time.

“Dan,” Jimmy says, his voice going stern. He almost sounds angry. “Dan, you’re shaking.”

Dan shakes harder.

“I’m sorry,” he manages to say on an inhale.

On the exhale, tears start rolling down his cheeks. Stupid, embarrassing, pathetic tears that Dan has no reason to cry.

Jimmy gets off of him finally. Dan pulls his pants back up and rolls to his side, facing away from Jimmy’s concerned posture. Concern that Dan doesn’t deserve. Concern for something that Dan can’t even name.

“What’s happening?” Jimmy asks.

The world stops spinning. Dan’s throat opens up and he almost chokes on the breath he greedily inhales.

His body feels so heavy. His heart hurts. He wishes everything would stop for a moment and he could quit being a person. Quit being expected to put words to what he is feeling, and why. It never fits with the situation. Dan makes things wrong.

“Dan.”

Jimmy sounds so small. The way he says Dan’s name sounds like a plea.

Dan sits up. He feels shaken still, but at least he can breathe. He forces himself to look at Jimmy and the moment he ruined and he steels himself to not feel a single fucking thing.

“I’m sorry,” Dan says.

“Are you okay?” Jimmy asks, his urgency suddenly hitting Dan.

“I’m okay,” Dan says.

Nothing about his inflection reassures that fact. He speaks in a monotone, like he’s just a shell of a person.

Jimmy moves into his space again. Dan flinches, but Jimmy strokes a hand along his cheek and stares into his eyes like he’s trying to see what’s behind them. Dan is glad that Jimmy can’t see it. Even if he hates that he shows even a small part of it, what really happens inside is so grotesque that he is definitely happy there is no telling what that really is or why to anyone else.

Jimmy looks at him as if he is something fragile, something to offer sympathy to.

“You scared me,” Jimmy says.

His voice wavers. Dan blinks for a moment, feeling just how unaffected he is by the emotion he is being subjected to, before he remembers himself and pulls Jimmy in for a kiss.

If he can’t feel anything, he will pretend to.

Jimmy kisses back almost furiously. He holds on to Dan as if this is what will fix him. As if this will bring him back. Dan pulls away before Jimmy is ready to, but they settle face to face on Dan’s pillows while Jimmy keeps tracing his knuckles along Dan’s cheek.

It feels good, in some way. It feels like exactly the amount of touch he can deal with right now.

“Did I do something wrong?”

Jimmy’s eyes are searching, glued to Dan’s face. Dan puts a hand over Jimmy’s and keeps it there.

“No,” he says, voiceless, and shakes his head.

“Was it…,” Jimmy hesitates. “Did you…”

He has no idea how to word it, but Dan knows what he is getting at. Dan is used to Susanne, and Haley, and Morgan, who all know how to talk about things like this. Jimmy doesn’t. Jimmy still looks scared, even if he is trying to seem strong.

Many times in his life, Dan has had to comfort people when he is the one that is ill. He never expects people to understand. He has had to explain and apologise so many times that he feels bad for being tired of doing it.

The difference now is that he doesn’t talk about it. He knows who gets it, if he really does need to talk about it. But Jimmy is seeing a side of it that gets harder to push away the more time they spend together. Dan has to explain.

“It’s part of it,” Dan says, even if Jimmy doesn’t know how to ask. “It’s okay. I’m used to it.”

Jimmy relaxes a little bit. It makes Dan want to cry again.

“I’m sorry,” Dan says, and he means it. He means it so much it hurts. “I’m so sorry for scaring you.”

Jimmy’s face is awash with sympathy in an instant. Dan doesn’t know if he deserves it. Dan doesn’t even know if he is sorry because Jimmy was affected by what happened, or if he is sorry because he showed a side of himself that he would prefer to keep hidden.

“What?” Jimmy says. “No.”

Dan frowns.

“Don’t,” Jimmy says.

He turns his hand around inside Dan’s palms so he can grip it with his fingers. Dan swallows.

“I wasn’t scared of you,” he says. “That’s not it. I just… felt bad. I don’t know. It seemed scary.”

Dan shakes his head.

“It’s mostly under control,” he says. “You know. Treatment and… things.”

He hates that. He hates that he has to do these things to almost function as a person when other people don’t have to. He hates that it’s a part of his life and history that the people close to him have to know in order to fully be in his life. He hates that he didn’t get to choose whether Jimmy knew. He hates that Lucy had assumed that it was fair game to talk about with Jimmy.

Jimmy doesn’t judge him. He even manages a smile. It doesn’t really make Dan feel better about it, but Jimmy wants their _something_ to work enough to want to try to understand him, at least.

“Good,” he says. “That’s good.”

Dan hums.

“You know, I have another friend with…,” Jimmy stalls. “Who went through something like that.”

Dan nods as his focus starts to shift. Everyone has a friend with similar issues.

“It’s the guy from Uni,” Jimmy says. “I think he’s better now, but… It’s not something I haven’t seen before, I mean. You don’t have to worry about it.”

That does unclench something from around Dan’s heart. It makes him feel freer. Dan pushes Jimmy’s hand off from his face and moves in closer. He holds on to Jimmy’s hand between their chests as he moves his thigh between Jimmy’s legs until he can feel his crotch. Jimmy lets him. His face twists ever so slightly, as if he is reminded that this is also a thing that they can do, and that that is nice.

“We don’t have to-”

“Shh,” Dan shushes him. “I want to.”

Mostly, what Dan wants is to stop talking about this. Regardless, as he settles his mouth on Jimmy’s neck and moves his hips forward, creating friction for Jimmy to push into, it does feel good. Jimmy goes easily, humping his leg while precious whimpers escape his lips.

“You can fuck me again,” Dan whispers into his ear.

Jimmy pulls away with a questioning look that Dan nods in response to. Jimmy pushes himself on top, and Dan removes the ugly part of their evening from his memory. 

They had sex twice, and that was that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Back Of The Car by Miike Snow  
> listen to the fic playlist [**[here]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)
> 
> as an aside, i wanted to give a shout out to fission (@madebyfission) for making this lovely little animation based on the playlist (and my username, i presume ;>) so if you want to feel as emotional as i did after watching a 16 second clip you should definitely [**click here**](https://twitter.com/madebyfission/status/1154528587443245057). i'm a huge fan of their work already so i'm really really happy they made this :')


	13. Chapter 13

Dan puts the phone screen down atop the table and sighs.

He doesn’t go to therapy to keep cancelling his appointments. He doesn’t stay in touch with Susanne to email her with half-assed explanations.

She doesn’t judge him for it, Dan knows. It just doesn’t sit well with him, in this part of his life. He is supposed to be at the better part now, or at least the okay-er part. And the okay-er part of his life calls for him going to therapy like a functional person to _keep_ being a functional person.

Dan keeps doing dysfunctional shit, though. Not going to therapy is both the biggest and smallest thing he should worry about.

He didn’t go to dinner at Will and Rob’s. He has been ignoring Haley’s phone calls. They live close to him, but when Dan gets like this he might as well have moved to fucking Antartica.

Jimmy is part of his life now, in a bigger way than Dan really feels ready for him to be. Dan’s social interactions used to come down to the Fall Whisperer fandom and the couple times a week he would see his friends. Since Jimmy barged his way into his life again, all of that close contact has made Dan feel less able to focus on his other relationships.

That is why he has a schedule. That is why he plans things out. That is why he doesn’t do the unpredictable thing. That is why it is better to get most of his interaction through a screen.

Because if he strays from that formula, he ends up not going to therapy. He stops taking care of his relationships. It’s a vicious cycle that he is far too familiar with, and yet when he gets stuck in it time and time again he doesn’t seem to know how to stop it before someone gets hurt or he gets so ill he has to ask for help out of it.

He is at the point where he really should be speaking to Susanne outside of the emails telling her he can’t come this week. He is consciously ignoring that insight, an insight which she has instilled in him. It’s ironic, really. As if Dan wants to keep making the same mistakes and never get better.

Susanne is a good person to talk to about certain topics, while leaving others out. There is no saying you have to tell your therapist everything, but a large part of his life has been left out of his therapy sessions and so he hasn’t really worked out that part of himself. The panic and the feeling unmotivated and the family problems have always been at the forefront of their conversations.

Dan has to talk about his relationships and identity issues at some point. He knows this. But, contrary to what he believed before he started therapy, knowing where his issues lie is not always the key to solving them. Dan has always found a way to complicate things, though. It should be no surprise that healing is even more complicated, confusing and painful than suffering once was.

Dan’s phone buzzes. He picks it up and considers it while he reads Haley’s name on his screen. He feels a painful tug in his stomach, but he opens the notification all the same. She is going to ask him to meet up. Dan doesn’t want to see anyone, really. But he can’t keep doing what he wants. It never does him any good.

He replies ‘yes’ to the proposition he expected.

-

They meet in a coffee shop they rarely ever go to anymore.

When Haley moved to Dan’s building, they didn’t have a reason to meet up in town anymore, or in the city as it were. Back in Wokingham they had their place, and in London they have one too. It doesn’t feel the same, but Dan is learning that adult life has a lot to do with substitution.

There are similarities, though. The drinks are too expensive and they always seem to end up there when every other person in the world wants coffee, too. The logo may be different but the staff is as overworked and tired as the one in the coffee shop back at home. Haley’s hair is longer nowadays but she complains about it just as much.

Haley doesn’t ask him what he has been up to when they meet, and that is why Dan really thinks of her as the safest person to meet up with apart from Jimmy. She gets caught up in herself and in the situations Dan constantly lends his ears to. If enough time has passed since their last one-on-one conversation, he enjoys it. He cares about her and he wants to know what she does with her days and what stupid shit her mum did last. Dan wills himself to believe that her not asking anything back doesn’t mean she doesn’t care. That it just means that she doesn’t think to ask. He still sort of feels it, though. He always does. And that feeling lingering in the back of his mind during all of their interactions makes it not really matter where they are, because that, if anything, feels like home.

Dan watches the way the silver stud at her bottom lip moves as she speaks once they have sat down with their coffees. The surroundings’ low murmur sounds like a roar and Dan struggles to make out exactly what Haley is saying, but he will deal with the repercussions of this overexertion later. Right now Haley is talking about a TV show that she loves to hate and Dan should know better now than to look at her lips and give her the wrong idea as a result.

“So why haven’t you been responding?” is the first direct question Haley fires at him.

The café has quieted down, and their drinks and bagels have been finished. Haley does smile at him as she asks. She isn’t as bothered about things as she used to be.

“Depression, I guess,” Dan says, because it’s his stock answer.

It isn’t untrue. He constantly deals with his depression. But so does Haley, and Haley doesn’t isolate herself. Different strokes for different depressed folks, sure, but Dan can’t help but compare himself.

Haley nods. “I miss you, though. It’s been a while since it got to the point that you stopped responding even to Lucy.”

It sounds like she is worried about him, to the untrained ear. Given the disdain Dan hears in her voice, that is not what she is saying. It’s an incredibly see-through way of her to communicate her jealousy. She isn’t asking why his depression may have been especially bad. She is asking why it is that he always responds to Lucy first, and not her.

Haley can be selfish, and Dan accepts that about her while keeping her as a friend. That selfishness is what makes him keep her at a distance, though. He can stomach it in small doses, and it isn’t always as prevalent, but most of the time it makes him angry. Angry in a way that he hates, because it isn’t like he wants to call her out on it. He gets angry in this childish way that reminds him of being sixteen years old in Wokingham with Haley on his arm as he tried to understand why he couldn’t fall in love with her.

“I’m with you now, though,” Dan says.

It sounds like he is saying he is feeling better, to the untrained ear. But what he is really doing is soothing her jealousy by reminding her that _she_ is the first person he has agreed to meet with this time around.

It works. Haley smiles, nods, and leans forward. She needs her ego stroked in order to be able to focus her attention on another person.

“So, what’s up?” she asks.

Dan hesitates. He doesn’t lean forward. Instead he half shrugs.

Does he talk about stuff like this with Haley now? He can’t tell if they have reached that point.

“What did you think of me when we were together?” Dan blurts.

Haley pulls back, just slightly. One shoulder tenses.

Dan sits in the discomfort. He has to face it at some point.

“I don’t know?” Haley half-laughs. “That was a long time ago.”

She is hilarious, Dan thinks as he hides a bitter smile behind his hand. As if their past doesn’t affect every single interaction they have to this day. They just don’t talk about it. If Haley is daft enough to not realise that herself, Dan has severely overestimated her. He hasn’t, though. Because Haley stretches her mouth into something conceding.

“Detached,” she says, eventually. “Like… One-sided, in a way? Sometimes? I don’t think I realised that at the time, though.”

Dan opens his mouth with a dry ‘pop’.

“What do you mean?” he asks, attempting an air of nostalgic intrigue to conceal the fact that he is practically bleeding out in front of her, cut so deep from that one word.

_Detached_.

“When we were together you just, you know, were fun,” she says. “We get along. You know, we were more like friends than boyfriend and girlfriend anyway.”

The smile fades from her expression momentarily. It still hurts her, too. Dan wishes that the first romantic connection Haley made hadn’t been a lie, but he can’t change the past. He still feels responsible, though. Responsible and guilty in a way that still underlines his reasons as to why he still hangs out with her.

“But after I kind of just,” Haley sighs, “realised that you’d been flimsy with me and basically only met up with me like it was some kind of chore. I know you were working through stuff, but yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Dan says. “It wasn’t a chore.”

Haley nods like she understands, but there is something resentful behind her eyes that Dan feels, viscerally. He doesn’t know any other people with that effect on him. He has been on the receiving end of disappointment and bitterness and anger from a lot of people, but when it comes from Haley, Dan crumbles.

“I was just wondering, I don’t know,” Dan sighs. “I didn’t mean to drag up old shit.”

He laughs. She smiles in return. They don’t align, though. It doesn’t feel as peaceful.

Dan wants to run.

He doesn’t have to worry about Haley asking him why he asked, at least. She is caught up in thinking about the past, and villainising him. She doesn’t have time to care about frivolous things like her best friend of twelve years, bringing up an old argument after having not talked to her for a few weeks.

Dan and Haley take a walk after they leave the coffee shop. It gets a bit easier, then. They start talking about other things. Dan says goodbye to her at her door and makes sure to leave before Lucy can see him.

The heavy feeling he pushed away crushes him the moment he steps foot in his flat.

Detached.

Jimmy probably thinks of him that way, too. Haley does. His dad does. Hell, maybe even his server team does. He hasn’t really proved himself as a reliable ally to them, anyway.

Dan sits down on his bed and breathes in a long breath.

He just doesn’t know how to attach. He never learned how to. Any attachment he formed as a child ended up breaking before he was ready to, and then the blame was passed on to him. He knows that it’s selfish to blame it on that, though. He doesn’t even really think of himself as the sort of person that would try to hurt other people in that way.

It doesn’t make sense to him, that he could matter enough to other people that they would want to bond with him in a real way. Haley didn’t want to, back in the day, even if Dan still feels bad about emotionally neglecting her and lying to her for most of their romantic relationship. 

The desire anyone has to bond with Dan sort of fades when it gets to the hard part, he has noticed. So he doesn’t really try to bond anymore. There has to be some distance, or else he will end up disappointing people.

Dan can tell from Jimmy’s bright green eyes and tender touches that he wants to bond. He wants to develop it into something.

All Dan can see are obstacles. Things getting between himself and the freedom to explore his emotions. He can see an emotion, somewhere far away, an emotion he has for Jimmy that could create something that wouldn’t make the _something_ they have seem so difficult to give in to. 

But that emotion is held hostage by his own coping mechanisms, and the ransom is a high price for Dan to pay.

He can’t let himself feel it all. He won’t be able to live. If he gets access to that one feeling he may or may not have for Jimmy, he can’t tell, then that means he might get access to a load of other feelings he would rather keep at bay. It isn’t worth it, is it? And if it were worth it, if the feeling was strong enough, then Dan would already know it was worth it. Wouldn’t he?

Sometimes, the idea of feeling anything seems fake. The idea of having the courage to feel anything that could be exposing or vulnerable seems fake. People do it all the time. Dan can’t.

Because Dan detaches.

-

Thursdays have been marked on some internal calender for a while now, but as Philip walks into the clinic this afternoon Dan is surprised to see him. He hasn’t really been thinking about him. It is almost strange to remember that he is still walking around in that weird silver jacket with that black quiff and that half smile that asks not to be looked at. Dan meets his smile as he approaches the window.

Did he not come in last week? 

Last week is a blur of Jimmy towering over him and guilt and a racing heart, but Dan would have remembered Philip. He doesn’t even mean anything to Dan, really. All he really did was open up a longing for something, and somehow, the universe provided him with the possibility of that _something_. Not that the universe really provides anyone with anything. It is a strange coincidence though, Dan can’t pretend that it isn’t.

As Philip, needlessly, states his name the difference between him and Jimmy makes itself known. They’re both dorky, gangly guys with pretty bright eyes, but there is something Dan sees in Philip that he doesn’t find in Jimmy. Then again, Dan always sets himself up for disappointment when he expects someone to act or be a certain way. It is all interpretation, that Dan keeps relying on despite solid evidence that his interpretations are most often wrong, or skewed.

Philip looks happy this evening. Dan checks him in and tells him to sit down.

He still looks over at him as he does, and Philip looks back. Dan offers a smile that Philip returns. New has always been appealing to Dan, and Philip is still new. His eye crinkles and jagged teeth create visions in Dan’s mind, a hope for something familiar, and though it is a greedy thing to hope for seeing as he is going to Jimmy’s after work today Dan lets himself indulge in the eye contact they share until Eric calls Philip in for his appointment.

Philip seems so awkward as he walks over to the therapist. His posture is off, he totally slumps, and he keeps his hands in his pocket in a way that doesn’t look casual as much as it looks like an attempt to feel more comfortable. Dan hasn’t seen much of that awkwardness in the eye contact they share. Maybe it is because Dan isn’t a person to feel threatened by. Maybe it is because Philip has made Dan up as a character to self project onto, too.

As Dan gets back to work and Philip leaves, he realises that it doesn’t really matter. They have a few minutes to look at each other every Thursday, and that doesn’t actually mean anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: The Dream Synopsis by The Last Shadow Puppets  
> [ **[playlist link]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	14. Chapter 14

It isn’t bad, waking up to a handjob.

It isn’t bad, when lips graze Dan’s jaw and a needy bulge presses against his hip. Dan lets his eyes stay shut, willing his mind back to the calmness that the lack of consciousness provided him. It grows increasingly more difficult to do when the slow strokes make him leak onto his stomach. That is one of those things that Dan hasn’t really had experience with before, to have had sex with someone enough times for them to know what he likes without him needing to ask for it.

It is barely a handjob, anyway. It’s just Dan’s dick, lying hard against his stomach as Jimmy wisps his fingers over the shaft, wrapping his hand around intermittently, and then releasing. It shouldn’t be enough, but eventually Dan starts panting as his hips involuntarily roll with the touch.

“Morning,” Jimmy mumbles.

He sounds barely awake himself. Dan responds by squeezing Jimmy’s bulge over his pants.

“Oh,” Jimmy sighs.

Dan leans into the good feelings. The other part is still there, the spectator, judging the whole thing with an unfairly critical eye. It wonders if Jimmy thinks that this is romantic, and if this is a solid thing now. It grins in sadistic victory when Dan acknowledges that that isn’t what he wants; that it isn’t something he _could_ want.

Susanne tells him that the spectator might always be a part of him, but that it is his way of dealing with its presence that matters. Let it speak its mind, unhelpful as it is. Let it glare like Dan is someone to glare at, someone to find all the wrongs in. To pay it no mind when it does, because it lies.

There are periods of time when Dan has an easier time not listening to it. To do the exact thing Susanne tells him to. But those are the times when Dan withdraws, when he doesn’t subject himself to real life. The spectator doesn’t have much to say when Dan spends all his time either at work or in front of the computer. Perhaps those periods of times aren’t Dan’s healthy coping mechanisms coming into play. Perhaps they are simply Dan following the spectator’s orders, to keep himself hidden away from the world long enough that it doesn’t have to keep telling him all those things.

“What’s the matter?” Jimmy asks.

Dan hasn’t been taking anything in. No sensations, no sounds, no sights. He opens his eyes to Jimmy’s sleep-puffy face and fakes a smile.

Jimmy is asking because Dan is going soft.

“Nothing,” Dan says. “I fell asleep for a second.”

Jimmy grins. It was the correct answer, the spectator tells him.

“You fell asleep,” Jimmy giggles, leaning in closer, the tips of their noses almost touching. “That’s so you.”

It stings. Dan tilts his head up and closes the distance between their lips. Jimmy kisses back enthusiastically, his hand going faster on Dan’s cock. It starts to harden again, and as it does Jimmy rolls on top, pulls his own dick out of his pants, and aligns them.

Dan remembers a dingy mattress on the floor and painted red lips as Jimmy fists their cocks to rub together.

Dan closes his eyes hard, and detaches from the present. He pulls out a distant fantasy, a scene that Sam wrote, about White fucking Dye mercilessly. It works. Dan pushes the memory from his mind successfully, only focusing on the fantasy. He comes as Jimmy humps him, whilst imagining a different place in a different time where Dan is nothing but that spectator, never pressured into interaction at all.

For some unfathomable reason it is disgustingly appealing; the prospect of being that meaningless.

-

Dan doesn’t stay in Jimmy’s flat for long after he has left for work. He doesn’t feel comfortable taking up this space without the excuse of keeping Jimmy company. Jimmy, on the other hand, has left a toothbrush in Dan’s bathroom and a few clean pairs of underwear just in case. Dan never leaves while Jimmy is at his flat, he can’t stand the thought of him being in there alone.

If there’s anything Dan can do in a situation like this, it is to play dumb. He will act surprised when Jimmy does something sweet, he will cringe at pet names, he will smother any attempt at a serious conversation with sex. Dan doesn’t want Jimmy to leave, but he is selfish enough to want him to stay on Dan’s terms. Dan’s guilt is no longer exclusive to the possibility of indirectly hurting Lucy through doing this, as the risk of hurting Jimmy increases.

If Dan can play so dumb, can’t he fake falling in love? There has to be other people as broken as himself, in relationships, staying for superficial reasons. Dan wonders if they feel as guilty about it as him, or if you become desensitised to the feeling after enough time has passed.

In a way, Dan feels as though he has spent numerous lifetimes hurting already. As if the heaviness of each day has been with him since before he was born, and that that is all he could ever possibly know. But then, in another way, it is as if he is still acclimating to the consequences of that pain. To all of the things he has lost to it, the ability to fall in love being one of them.

Dan falls in love with the idea rather than the person. It is why he reads the fanfics, and feels so invested in the idea of Dye and White. He can become infatuated through that filter, as a third party, whilst suppressing that deep painful yearning for having that himself. It doesn’t matter if the world pushes a handsome, kind, amazing guy at him. Dan can’t feel anything before it is too late.

Dan sits down at his pc with a cup of coffee and leans back in his chair. He barely feels the weight of everything he is coming to realise in the past few weeks. He can’t allow himself to. And so he slips into the world online with surprising ease, feeling his mind push out everything that’s real by caring about things that don’t really matter.

Until it matters.

Because an hour later, Dan receives a direct message on twitter. It isn’t from Morgan, or Jamie, or Sam, or Mason. It isn’t from a helpless person that is new to Fall Whisperer and expects him to guide them through it. It’s from IrregularSymbol. Dan clicks the name to look at her profile, and it is from the real verified account. Dan’s mind spins, he chokes on the gasp, and takes an embarrassingly long time to gather himself enough to read the message properly.

_Dear achromatic_bot,_

_I’m just joking. I’m not that formal. I don’t even know if you are dear to me! Okay let’s not get that deep. It’s nothing personal, by the way; I just don’t know you. Um. Alright sorry I don’t know what I’m talking about either so I’ll just get straight to the point._

_Me and the team have seen what you’ve been doing with the servers over the last year and we’re impressed, honestly. As you know there have been some things happening with the game lately (don’t tell Seagull I said that, he likes to pretend to be oblivious lol) and we have some plans for an event in the not too distant future that, if you’re interested, we would like for you to help out with. I don’t want to give away too many details, but I do think I can trust you based on how you’ve been acting online._

_Regardless, the offer is to help out with a game event that is meant for fans, and it revolves around the servers. We could really use your help as you are not only playing a lot but know some of the technical ins and outs about it. If you agree, we will of course compensate you financially_

_Love, Irregular Symbol. (love?? No, that is way too intimate. Soz, can’t help being weird.)_

Dan is so out of his mind he accidentally tweets _yes_ instead of responding to the actual DM. He laughs at himself, almost maniacally, before he opens the message back up with shaking hands and responds.

_Hi! All of the formalities aside: I would love to help! I don’t know if my “expertise” is needed, but if there is anything you want to ask in order to get it all set up, I’m totally down. It sounds exciting, whatever it is! I hope you didn’t stalk me too much btw, what happens on the forum stays on the forum LOL._

_Love(?), achromatic_bot_

Dan doesn’t know how much time passes before he actually decides on that message, but when he sends it his ankle joints crack after being still for too long. He rubs his eyes, feeling something strange flutter inside his chest. There is no way for him to take this in. There is no way to realise that one of the three main developers of Fall Whisperer has not only noticed his activity online, but knows it well enough to consider him for something like this.

He has no idea what they want him to do, but Dan feels like he has somehow forgotten every single thing he has learned about the technical side to the servers. He can’t do this - not when a message like hers is enough for him to feel completely at a loss.

But at the same time, Dan wants to. He wants to, so deeply, that he can honestly ignore the spectator for it. He doesn’t have to fake his enthusiasm about this. No matter how much his brain tries to find something negative about this, it fails. Other than the self doubt and feeling like he is receiving more praise than he has earned, everything about it is fucking amazing. He wants to shout out of pure elation; jump up and down with joy until his knees go weak. 

Dan stares at the messages for a long time, reading them both over and over for reasons he can’t name. He needs to calm down. He has to catch his breath.

Dan pulls up the youtube video he frequents, of Seagull narrating TriangleNoses’s art with the story of Fall Whisperer and how it became a game. Dan isn’t sure if there is anything that can soothe him from this feeling, this anticipation for something he does not know, but the sound of Seagull’s voice takes him down a few notches. The vision of TriangleNoses’s art, animated in that choppy style, makes it easier to think clearly again. Dan sighs. IrregularSymbol probably won’t respond for a while. He needs a distraction more powerful than this.

-

That is how he ends up messaging Jimmy. He is never the one to initiate a conversation, but he just wants this right now. He needs it.

_I want you._

Jimmy responds quickly, like he always does, as if he spends his days at work just waiting for Dan’s message.

_Already, huh?_

Dan doesn’t even mind the insinuation right now.

_Yup. Meet at yours after work?_

_As if you even have to ask at this point?? Cutie._

There’s a pet name. A warning. Something Dan should put a stop to.

_Lol don’t call me out on being a ho. See you later, handsome_

It is incredibly stupid, Dan realises even now as he sends it, but he doesn’t fucking care. The spectator is quiet and Dan wants to enjoy the silence for as long as he is allowed to.

-

It isn’t exactly a silence, but it isn’t loud either.

It’s something that feels like a roar but it doesn’t spook him. Dan has all of these sparking emotions fluttering about, and all he has to do to get another one is to think about the message. Jimmy notices, of course, that something is different from this morning. Once they meet up at his flat, Dan only has to smile at him for Dan to see the surprise in Jimmy’s eyes. Something tentatively hopeful appears there, a feeling Dan normally would dread, but now he leans into it.

He practically wrestles Jimmy down on the sofa even if Jimmy doesn’t protest. They kiss and it’s electric, almost wild, the kind of kisses you see on TV and never experience in real life because accessing emotions that powerful is dangerous for someone like Dan. Maybe this is dangerous, but if it is Dan doesn’t want to think about it right now. He goes for it and Jimmy meets it with an almost equal amount of passion.

That is, until Jimmy tries to slow it down. Not unlike the times when Dan is on the other end of emotional overwhelm, Jimmy puts his hands on Dan’s cheeks in order to control the kiss, to turn it into something softer.

Dan isn’t an animal. He can control himself. But he does ease on the grabbing and the kissing when Jimmy pulls away just to look into his eyes. Dan kind of hates that he does that. He kind of doesn’t want Jimmy to want to look into his eyes like that, with some deluded admiration communicated only through something as simple as eye contact.

It’s as if Dan can’t hold that back right now. Because as Jimmy rubs his cheek that unsolicited affection turns into something sad, something like disappointment. Dan doesn’t want to see that. He doesn’t care if the affection isn’t deserved- as soon as it disappears he wants it back. He wants it back so badly.

“This is casual, yeah?” Jimmy asks.

He is trying so hard to sound unbothered. Dan can hear it in the faint waver of his voice at the final syllable. He can see it in the blissfully ignorant hope that somehow still remains faintly behind that sadness.

Dan is at a crossroads.

He could lie, and receive the love he doesn’t deserve, while not giving any of it back. Keep the delusion going, make it worse, make it hurt even more once it ends.

Dan sighs, and sits back. Their legs are tangled on the sofa, and Jimmy, amazingly, laughs as Dan tries to pull his legs back as if untying a particularly difficult knot. 

He laughs even as his heart is breaking, Dan thinks.

Dan smiles in return. He worries his fingers through the hole of his skinny jeans, probably making it larger by effect, as he stalls. Jimmy puts a hand on Dan’s back. Comforting him. When Jimmy is the one that is hurting.

“It’s alright,” Jimmy says, and he sounds genuine. “I’d rather we establish it before it goes any further. We’re both adults.”

Dan turns to glance at him. He feels all that adrenaline from before wash away, but he isn’t left feeling drained. There’s a nagging guilt keeping him from falling into that pit just yet. There’s a part of him that wants to establish a lie rather than the truth, because of what this could turn into. It may make Dan a terrible person, but the truth is that he is mostly scared that if he decides to be honest, Jimmy won’t want to see him anymore. He won’t want to fuck him anymore. Dan really wants to keep fucking Jimmy, even if it isn’t right.

“It is,” Dan says, suddenly having a hard time finding the words. “For me, I mean. I.. is it not? For you?”

Dan is an idiot. He doesn’t want to hear Jimmy say it.

“I mean--,” Dan says, shaking his head with an inappropriate laugh, “I’m sorry, I meant…”

“Dan,” Jimmy says.

The hand on his back moves up, towards the back of Dan’s neck, massaging him. Dan leans into it with a quiet groan, his eyes falling shut.

“I’ve been open to most outcomes,” Jimmy says, whispered as if they’re exchanging secrets. “I just don’t want it to turn ugly.”

Dan places his hand on Jimmy’s thigh and strokes down, deliberately slow. Jimmy catches his eye and they look at each other. There’s that _something_ hanging in the air between them, the thing that Dan is scared to acknowledge but is now being forced to. He just doesn’t know if that _something_ is all Jimmy’s, or potentially Dan’s as well. All he knows is that he will disappoint Jimmy regardless. Dan isn’t boyfriend material.

Dan moves his hand up Jimmy’s thigh. If Jimmy is open, Dan doesn’t mind being used as an easy fuck. He isn’t worth much more. Dan licks his lips.

“It won’t,” Dan says. “We’re both adults, like you said. I’m alright keeping it casual if you are.”

Jimmy does something then, that negates the entire thing. He pushes Dan’s face close to his own, their foreheads touching. Dan can feel Jimmy’s worried breaths, the weight to all of this is even clearer when they are this close. It feels like a darkness, similar to Dan’s but different all the same. It is broken but hopeful but restless. Maybe Jimmy has been through this before.

“I just-”

Jimmy doesn’t keep talking.

He pushes their lips together and the meaning of that is so clear that even Dan can feel it, resonating somewhere deep in his broken, loveless soul. Dan kisses back. He shouldn’t. He should pull away and not try to give Jimmy any more hope, not do any more damage than he already has.

But being wanted feels so _good_ that it makes Dan want to cry to even think about losing it. Whatever existed within him before this was worse than the shame and guilt and wrongness of all of this. He doesn’t want to make himself forget again. Even if he can’t reciprocate. Even if it isn’t healthy. He wants to remember Jimmy and he wants him in his life.

Jimmy pulls away with a noise that is almost like a sob, but he stifles it before it goes there. His open, bright green eyes don’t hide even now. They’re as deep and easy to read as they always are. Dan can’t believe someone with that openness has the capacity to find anything desirable in Dan’s closed off gaze.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy says. “I... I can do casual.”

It sounds more like a plea than a settlement. Dan decides to not be selfish for once in his life.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

Jimmy shakes his head with a small laugh.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s not like I expected…”

He stops himself.

Dan’s heart shatters for a miniscule moment.

He pulls himself together immediately, scrambling for pieces but inevitably losing some along the way. He has done this so many times now that the shape of it is nowhere near what it was at the start, when it was intact, working differently than most hearts but still just as full.

Jimmy sees it, but for once he doesn’t say anything to mend the pain. Dan is glad. Dan is glad that Jimmy has some dignity, some desire to see Dan hurt just as badly as he is. It’s almost like a challenge, something dark, something that Dan wants to give in to. So before Jimmy can say anything else to take away that darkness, Dan straddles Jimmy’s lap on the sofa and grinds down until he can feel Jimmy’s cock.

“Fuck me,” Dan says, and he doesn’t care if it sounds like begging. “Please, fuck me.”

Jimmy grabs his ass and pushes their mouths together. He is always so insistent on kissing, even now.

“Do you deserve that?” Jimmy asks, and it’s quiet, restrained.

This is what Dan knows. This doesn’t scare him one fucking bit. He is scared of the affection, of the unrestrained and boundless something-like-love coming from Jimmy during the times they spend together. But this? This anger, this resentment? This is what Dan knows how to take. Maybe that’s why he keeps hurting people. Maybe it’s strategic rather than it is unintentional, dictated by Dan’s subconscious.

“No,” Dan says, equally subdued. “But you want it, don’t you?”

They’re moving together, and it feels like more than whatever they had before did. At least Dan can allow himself to feel this fully.

Jimmy doesn’t answer with words. He grabs Dan harder and he buries his face against his neck as they move.

Dan pretends that the wetness he feels against his neck is coming from Jimmy’s mouth rather than his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: If Only by The Kooks
> 
> [ **[fic playlist]** ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	15. Chapter 15

In the beginning of Fall Whisperer, you are faced with a choice.

After a few days of working out the game mechanics and being subjected to lurking shadows and strange messages and nightmares, your character becomes paralysed. Panicked dialogue boxes come quickly, first one by one, then they stack until they cover the screen, indistinguishable. You aren’t able to tell which of these phrases come from your own character’s thoughts and which come from the shadows that have been haunting them since the very start of the game.

It was unnerving, the first time Dan played it. What had seemed like a peaceful open world RPG slowly but steadily derailed into what at first seemed like anxieties, until it was revealed that these thoughts came from an outside source. The prompts about saving everyone, and taking the next step, were not something to make you think your character had some deep backstory. They were the pleas from the Shadow Realm, more specifically from your character’s shadow self.

The choice given is whether to deal with the problem by going to the cave or to the garden. To the player, this choice doesn’t seem to mean much. It is one of two ways to progress the story, and that is it.

When Dan decided on the cave, his character froze upon entering. Anxious thoughts flooded the screen.

_I know this is what they want, but what if they’re lying?_

_I don’t know if they’re good. I’ve never known if they were good._

_All they do is startle me. That doesn’t feel good._

The option to go to the garden was presented yet again. Dan, figuring it couldn’t hurt, clicked ‘yes’.

But it didn’t change the character’s anxiety. It only presented it in a different way, through confusion and guilt, asking if it was right to not do as the shadows please. Would they become worse? And what if they aren’t evil, but truly in need of assistance that only the character can provide them with.

Dan ended up entering the garden. At once, serene music began to play and you were met with beautifully colourful imagery; plants and fruits in droves, neatly decorated. After moving through a couple rooms like it, the voices of the shadows got quieter and quieter until they were silenced.

Upon arriving in the third screen of the garden, a cut scene started. This is where you first meet Dye, in his grey tunic and braided blue hair, tending to his plants. Dye is at first surprised by the new visitor. He greets them hesitantly, as if he has got something to hide. 

“How did you… get here?” he asks. “I’m just a herbalist, my garden is all but exciting. I don’t usually allow visitors, you see.”

The player isn’t prompted with choices to respond. The character speaks.

“I felt a sense of peace coming here.”

Dye seems to calm at that.

“Ah. So do I, my friend.”

There is a moment of silence. Dye weighs from foot to foot anxiously.

“There is something to… keep safe from here, yeah?” he asks.

“There is,” the character responds.

“You. You see them sometimes, yeah? You hear them?”

The dialogue text turns into italics, like a whisper.

“What?” your character says. “Do you see them?”

“Yes,” Dye answers. “Now tell me, do you see them?”

“I do,” the character confirms.

“Have you heard or seen them in here?”

“No, actually,” your character responds. “I haven’t heard a peep.”

The box with Dye’s character portrait changes from the hesitant, suspicious expression into a pleased smile.

“Good,” Dye says. “It’s working.”

Dan hovers restlessly by his computer as Jimmy sits on his bed, wearing the York hoodie that has made a home in Dan’s drawer. They are friends, close friends even, and yet Dan can’t will himself to do what he would have been doing if Jimmy weren’t here.

Everyone knows that Dan plays a lot of video games, and hangs out online, but there is so much more to know about it than that. Dan can’t immerse himself in that world when Jimmy is tapping on his phone only a metre away. The possibility that he could get up at any moment to look at Dan’s screen feels like an intrusion in itself. Dan closes his web browser, still only showing google, and pulls up Spotify. He puts his song library on shuffle, as his only desire for the moment is some noise to cling to. Something that slims down the thickening silence between them.

At first, Dan had been pleased with the choice of going to the garden. Everything seemed to indicate that it had been the correct choice. It made him feel comfortable. The game changed into something lighter again, pulling up that illusion of a fun, easy-to-swallow indie RPG.

Until he returned to the character’s home, and what peacefulness had existed twisted up into a full on horror experience, leaving him blindsided and shaken up.

Dan has learned this lesson enough times that making the same mistake now is indicator for insanity. The reason why he knowingly repeats the cycle is because the blissful period of time before it gets bad, is somehow worth it. While he is still taunted by his own thoughts and fears and disengagement, there is something in it that appeals to him. In this situation, Dan wants to believe that Jimmy is the reason that he once again has set himself up for a relationship turning bad.

Dan knows it isn’t about Jimmy. As much as he enjoys his company and having sex with him, it is about making that shallow attempt to resolve his feelings of loneliness. Dan was well aware that getting back into Jimmy’s world meant that he was safe and sound from developing any feelings beyond the desire to feel them. That desire is fake, anyway. As Dan makes his way over to Jimmy on the bed, letting the music play in the background, he knows that he doesn’t want to feel anything for those pretty green eyes that brighten as Dan wordlessly straddles his lap and leans in to kiss him, fumbling with the hem of his shirt. He can’t, and won’t, hurt over this more than he feels obligated to.

He has to talk to Lucy about this at some point. He can’t keep cancelling dinner plans.

“It’s so weird when we’re like this,” Jimmy says after they’ve finished, and they lie cuddled in Dan’s bed.

Dan feels ridiculous to be resting his head against Jimmy’s chest, his arm around him, longing to be held. He is so much larger, but no matter the size difference, Jimmy can’t hold him.

“Weird,” Dan chuckles. “Thanks, mate.”

“I mean, like, we’re not a couple,” Jimmy says. “But you get real coupley after sex.”

Dan cringes internally, and attempts to roll away. Jimmy stops him. He is stronger than he looks, successfully keeping Dan close.

“It doesn’t mean I don’t like it,” Jimmy grins, the strong hold loosening as his hand travels to Dan’s chin and tilts it up to look in his eyes.

It isn’t good that Jimmy keeps talking this way. It isn’t good that he keeps creating these moments. Dan licks his lips, scouring his brain.

“Can I suck your dick again?” he ends up asking.

“If you want,” Jimmy smiles. “It might take a while, though. You’re good but you literally just made me come, mate.”

Dan exhales through his nose. The words create a ripple effect in his body, turning his mushy limp post-orgasm state into wanting more. He pushes himself up on one elbow and mouths at Jimmy’s jaw.

“Mmh, say that again,” he teases.

Jimmy breathes a laugh, but his voice is low when he speaks.

“You made me come.”

Dan feels between Jimmy’s legs, massages the base of his soft dick. He loves this feeling. He can indulge in the growing comfort between them more now that they both know what it’s about. Dan can even pretend like he doesn’t realise that Jimmy is only settling with this as a prolonged opportunity to make Dan fall in love with him.

“You really like that huh?” Jimmy says. “When I say it?”

“Yeah.”

Dan sneaks below the covers, mouthing in the darkness until he finds what he is looking for. A long exhale from Jimmy as he takes it all in his mouth and sucks gently.

Jimmy removes the covers and Dan grabs them, wraps them around his shoulders, and keeps sucking without looking up.

“Dan?” Jimmy says.

Dan hums his acknowledgement.

“Do you wanna come to a party with me on Saturday?” he asks. “Like, a proper gay thing.”

Dan has to laugh. 

“A proper gay thing?” he says, imitating Jimmy’s midlands accent.

He looks up, kissing the side of Jimmy’s spit slick cock as emphasis. Dan can feel the muscles in Jimmy’s thighs clench hard and he breathes in a few short breaths. God, Dan loves that reaction.

Jimmy relaxes as Dan pulls his mouth away and wanks him slowly instead.

“But did you wanna go?” he asks again, something hopeful in his eyes.

Dan should say no. He should put out that hopeful light before it grows into a flame.

“Sure,” he says.

It is one hell of a risk to try and keep that light contained. Impossible, probably.

But Dan does revel in the way Jimmy’s relieved smiling response turns into a horny groan when he lodges the now stiff cock down his throat. Dan doesn’t want to talk. Dan just wants to make Jimmy come.

It may mean that he keeps entering the garden, stalling for the inevitable. But in his life there is no White to come and redirect his focus to what needs to be done. In his life, all the plants in the garden eventually die and Dan is left alone to revive them, starting the cycle over.

The message isn’t that you need someone to save you, Dan knows. There is too much to save him from now, anyway. Piles upon piles of baggage to wade through in order to find the person beneath it all. Maybe if he were younger, more hopeful, less damaged. It doesn’t do to think about that now. 

Dan tried the cave years ago and he wasn’t strong enough to brave it. So he keeps to his garden, tends to the distractions, and hopes that they keep him from thinking for long enough that simply existing through life will keep him at least remotely sane until he finally dies.

-

 **falldelight** : i found a flower in the cave

 **falldelight** : on like level fifty

Dan is sitting cross legged in his office chair, leaning over his desk with a cup of coffee. He is resting his chin on one hand, staring with unseeing eyes at the screen. The caffeine makes his skin feel jittery, but his brain is just as close to shutting down as it was before he made the decision to have coffee at one in the morning.

He sighs and puts his fingers on the keyboard.

 **achromatic_bot** : already seen it

 **falldelight** : oh :(

 **falldelight** : i’ll never be the first to find anything will i?

 **achromatic_bot** : but you found it on your own. that’s what really matters.

 **falldelight** : i guess

Dan finishes the last of his coffee and rolls his shoulders back.

 **achromatic_bot** : you alright?

Morgan is the optimistic one. She continuously astounds Dan with her unwavering positivity, infectious and annoying at the same time. Recently, she hasn’t really treated their online world like she usually does. The server hasn’t been used as much, since the new patch was released and everyone went back to their personal games. Dan hasn’t seen a lot of people play around with the new feature that allows you to create larger server groups. He would try it out himself if he had time to set it up.

Despite the fandom feeling different in general since the patch, Morgan’s more subdued and quiet presence in it doesn’t seem to be due to that. Dan fears it has something to do with her personal life. Her personal life can get pretty rough.

 **falldelight** : yeah just tired, hbu?

The way she immediately shoots the question back reminds Dan of his own method to keep from talking about himself. Dan’s technique is the result of years of feeling unable to open up about his life. Morgan may be good at it to other people, but to Dan’s well trained eye it is amateur at best.

 **achromatic_bot** : morgan. come on. what’s up?

It takes Morgan five minutes to respond. Dan would never force anyone to talk about something if they really don’t want to, but it is different with the two of them. Beyond the safety of a screen, their back and forth usually remains easy even while talking about difficult topics. So, Dan feels safe pushing.

 **falldelight** : Sorry :( I don’t want to be short w you. I’m just tired..

 **achromatic_bot** : mentally tired or sleepy tired?

 **falldelight** : You know just how to get me to talk don’t you? :P

Dan smiles to himself. The emoticon is comforting. It feels like Morgan.

 **falldelight** : Mentally. And I missed you. :(

That stings. Dan hasn’t been very active on twitter, and the time he spends online recently he has been looking for clues in the game and reading about other peoples’ findings on the forum, while working on his own extensive draft on all the clues and what he thinks they mean. It doesn’t make for him participating in private conversations with his friends, that’s for sure. The time he would usually set out for that is spent with Jimmy. Dan feels mildly tied down by something that is supposed to be the opposite.

 **achromatic_bot** : yeah sorry i’ve had a lot to do irl

 **falldelight** : Wanna talk about it? <3

Dan hasn’t talked about it, to anyone. Him and Susanne are on an indefinite break after he cancelled that many appointments and he avoids his real life friends out of fear that they will figure out that he is seeing Jimmy. It is part of the spiral. Regardless of whether Jimmy would be at the centre of it, Dan stops talking about things and avoids people when he is getting worse.

Dan tries not to hate himself as he types out his response. The spectator is eyeing every word, scolding him for letting someone in on something it thinks he should protect.

 **achromatic_bot** : someone came back to my life that i haven’t seen in a while and i’ve been hanging out with him a lot.

 **falldelight** : Is it a good thing? Or?

Dan surprises himself with his immediate response.

 **achromatic_bot** : yeah. i think so. we have fun and he’s cool idk

Heart pounding, Dan forces himself to elaborate. As much as he wants to cover himself in battle armour and keep everyone from knowing enough about him to hurt him, he is so, so tired.

Dan’s shoulders slump. He is so tired.

 **achromatic_bot** : we’re sort of doing a friends with benefits thing? could’ve turned into more but idk i don’t think that’s for us. 

**falldelight** : Oh I think I know who you’re talking about now

Dan did tell her about Jimmy last year, when Lucy was about to break up with him and tensions were running high. The moment something happened between them, and Dan was broken down by guilt and shame, he stopped talking about it. He didn’t want to acknowledge it at all.

Strange, how something that felt so natural while it was happening really was, in hindsight, so tiring and soul crushing. Dan feels as if he is suddenly taking note of just how much he forces himself to carry each and every day. Does he have to do that? He has forgotten that there is any other option at this point, and the reminder is unnerving.

 **falldelight** : J, right?

Morgan knows the people in Dan’s life through abbreviations. It feels oddly nice to know she remembers.

 **achromatic_bot** : yeah it’s him i like what we’re doing mostly but no one knows and i can’t tell L i don’t think it’s really messy

 **falldelight** : Why not? :/

 **achromatic_bot** : she used to date him

 **falldelight** : I know that. Still, why not?

 **achromatic_bot** : she’d hate me i don’t even know why i’m doing it i’m a fucking shit friend and i can’t even talk to her anymore

Dan rubs his eyes before the tears manage to escape. 

**falldelight** : But they aren’t together. It’s not like you’ve done anything wrong. I reckon if she’s upset about anything it’s because she wants to hang out with you. She probably misses you, Dan. Just like I do when you’re gone.

This time, the tears roll down his cheeks before Dan has time to stop them. They land on the keyboard.

 **achromatic_bot** : sorry

 **falldelight** : I don’t want you to apologise. I know you can’t help it, that you need to take a step back to keep everything in order. You don’t owe it to me to talk to me every day.

 **achromatic_bot** : i feel like a shit bc i can’t be there for the people in my life like i want to

The wave of emotion ebbs away, replaced by an overwhelming, drained weight.

 **falldelight** : I think you should try to communicate with people more. You don’t have to and I might have it all wrong, but you’re a good person, Dan. You’re not the type of person that people would drop just like that. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by being honest.

 **falldelight** : <3

Dan wishes he could believe her. He wishes he didn’t immediately pull up a mental list of every mistake he has ever made, as if it is keeping score on how much of a good person he is regardless of circumstances. He wishes he could be normal.

 **achromatic_bot** : <3

 **achromatic_bot** : thought we were supposed to be talking about you lol

He doesn’t know how to respond to her comments without being self deprecating or sounding like an asshole, so he opts out. He just wants to go to sleep.

 **falldelight** : I didn’t know we were “supposed” to be talking about anything :P

Dan chuckles. That mental scoreboard apparently extends to something other than mistakes.

They say good night and Dan goes to bed. His heart hurts. He is feeling the weight of several upcoming conversations that he doesn’t feel ready to have, that he won’t ever feel ready to have. He has to have them. He can’t convince himself that Morgan is right, that he’ll come out the other side unwounded, and it terrifies him.

Despite how tired he is, those thoughts spin around his mind enough for it to take hours for Dan to successfully fall asleep for the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Cold Desert by Kings of Leon  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr?si=KDJUe-fjRO-AICbcoqepVQ) \- [**[tumblr post]**](https://intoapuddle.tumblr.com/post/186862511123/monochrome-chapter-fifteen-465k-words-so-far-e)


	16. Chapter 16

There are a few things that Dan will agree that he does well.

One of them is procrastinating, especially when it comes to emotional vulnerability. The moment he decides that he should definitely talk to Lucy and let her know what is going on between him and Jimmy, he finds every little thing to keep himself busy enough to not actually go through with it. If it isn’t Fall Whisperer, it is preparing for the upcoming server event. 

He has been in regular contact with irregularsymbol and despite how strange that is, Dan is starting to feel comfortable chatting with her. Their chats aren’t extensive, and they are usually focused on the task at hand, but jokes slip through. For every one that does, Dan finds himself thinking of her as less like this unreachable figure and more like an actual person, someone he can make laugh. His stomach still fills with nerves every time she messages him, but it isn’t the same as it was. It’s excitement, rather than anxiety.

The anxiety waves that do come around get there when irregularsymbol mentions TriangleNoses and Seagull. The off hand comments about them, mentions of things they’ve said. It makes them real. Irregularsymbol hasn’t revealed anything about the purpose of the server except that it is meant for an announcement, and Dan could probably ask but he doesn’t want to risk his position now. No matter how tempting, he knows better than to ask for information that isn’t meant for him to know. If it was, irregularsymbol probably would have told him about it at this point.

Dan fills his head with that every time he looks at his and Lucy’s text conversation on his phone, trying to find the courage to ask if they could meet up soon. It works to stave off that wave of anxiety, but it doesn’t move him forward. It is exactly what Susanne tells him that he should try to avoid the best he can.

Sometimes, Dan really hates being self aware about his coping mechanisms to the point where he can’t excuse them away as not realising that he was setting himself up for failure. It is better this way, when Dan is capable of thinking critically about his own actions and motivations. But it doesn’t help his tendency to overthink. It doesn’t help his inability to enjoy a moment for what it is. He sometimes wonders what is worse.

Jimmy’s flat is close to his work, and when Dan hangs out there the day before the supposed party Jimmy wants him to go on, he can’t enjoy anything. They are in bed, but not touching. Dan simply listens to Jimmy complain about his crap job and interjects when he has to while his mind runs wild thinking about all the things he doesn’t want to do. 

When Jimmy pauses, looking off on the ceiling as his mind wanders, Dan places a hand on his thigh. Jimmy’s head jerks as he quickly looks at him.

Dan stares back, holding eye contact, as he massages closer to Jimmy’s crotch. There is one thing that gets his mind off of the hard stuff, and maybe he shouldn’t indulge, but it would be nice to come to work without feeling exhausted from running a mental marathon of guilt trips for once.

Before Dan can touch him, Jimmy grabs Dan’s hand and stops him from reaching his goal. Dan intertwines their fingers and leans in, pushing his lips on top of Jimmy’s.

Jimmy doesn’t reciprocate. He doesn’t open his mouth for Dan’s tongue, and he doesn’t put Dan’s hand on his dick. Dan pulls back, leaving a small peck on Jimmy’s lips.

“Sorry,” Jimmy says, letting go off Dan’s hand and sitting up properly.

“That’s okay,” Dan says immediately, even if he hasn’t thought about whether or not he is yet.

Right now, he isn’t okay. He feels rejected and it hurts. He feels confused and undesirable.

Jimmy eyes him cautiously as Dan moves to sit on the edge of the bed. The concern burns on his temple as Dan waits for the initial disappointment to go away. They aren’t tied down, they don’t have to have sex, but when Dan thinks about it he can’t remember the last time they hung out without at least making out.

“You sure it’s okay?”

Jimmy moves to sit next to him. Dan doesn’t really want to look at him, but he turns his head and meets his sympathetic eyes anyway.

“Yeah, ‘course,” Dan says with a fake laugh. “We’re fine. I just wanted to pass the time, I guess.”

He looks away, afraid that Jimmy will catch the lie on his face.

But then Jimmy grabs his hand, and nudges his arm with his elbow, and rests his head on Dan’s shoulder. Dan watches the way Jimmy wraps both of his hands around Dan’s and sighs.

The air feels thick with awkwardness.

“Come here,” Jimmy says after a beat of silence.

Dan simply turns to look at him and once he does, Jimmy grabs the back of his head and kisses him.

It feels fucking good. Dan leans into it with his whole body, taking hold of Jimmy’s sides to keep him close while their lips move together. He tries to ignore the part of himself that thinks that Jimmy is only doing it because he feels bad. The way Jimmy massages his scalp gently and opens his mouth for him doesn’t feel remorseful.

Dan lets it happen. Jimmy leads the way now, as determined about it as he seemed to be about _not_ letting it happen moments ago.

-

Dan eyes his reflection as he smooths his hands over the black button up covering his frame. He isn’t sure about Jimmy’s supposed gay friends, but Dan will probably look conservative in his black jeans and shirt when he is around them. He messes a hand into his hair and rolls his shoulders back. He doesn’t see much of himself in the mirror. He looks too tall, too filled out, too adult. On the inside, Dan still feels like the gangly teenager that imagined the future with star-dazzled eyes. On the outside, he is a man whose brain hasn’t caught up with his body because mental illness that progression on pause.

He isn’t sure if he has unpaused yet. That is yet to be seen.

It’s easier to worry about clothing choice than it is to worry about how the night is going to go, so Dan thinks hard about how stupid he must look the whole way over to Jimmy’s.

Jimmy greets him outside his building by pulling him in for a tight hug. It is strange, Dan thinks, to give a friendly pat on his back when they just had sex yesterday. It is probably stranger than Dan thinks it is, really. He is so used to non-relationships it surprises him to feel wary about smiling back when Jimmy grabs his arm and ushers him along the streets of London.

It is too cold for not wearing a jacket. It serves as something else to cling to, though. If his body has to focus on maintaining a level temperature, his nerves won’t catch up with him.

They do catch up, though, when Jimmy pushes the buzzer of the building where the party takes place.

“Alright?” Jimmy asks, glancing at him.

Jimmy looks in his element already, and they haven’t even started drinking yet. His curly fringe is swooped in a way that Dan could only dream of achieving himself. He looks confident in his body, not hunched and apologetic like Dan.

“Yeah,” Dan says with a small nod.

He has made a couple of promises to himself in order to come out the other side of tonight unharmed. He won’t drink much, he will leave if he isn’t having fun, and he is not going to sleep with a stranger.

Jimmy is about to say something when the door clicks open. Dan grabs it and makes his way inside before Jimmy has time to voice any concerns.

The guy that opens the door to them after they’ve made it up the stairs smiles brightly. He has green eyes like Jimmy’s, but darker. His hair is mousy brown, straight, and pushed down into an emo haircut that Dan used to try for when he still bothered about that kind of stuff.

“Hi Chris!” Jimmy says.

The guy hugs him tight and Dan watches with interest. It surprises him to see platonic touches like this between men, still. When they part, Chris turns to Dan.

“This Dan, then?” he asks.

He pushes his hand out and Dan shakes it awkwardly.

“This is,” Dan confirms with a smile that doesn’t suit his face.

Jimmy grins and slaps a hand on Dan’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze.

“Can you guys get to know each other over a drink instead?” he asks. “I want a drink.”

Jimmy sounds different. When they are alone, his voice is softer. Right now it has an edge of sarcasm, wrapped around every word like a shield. Perhaps Jimmy really does understand what it is like to feel alone in a crowd.

Chris makes room for them in the small hallway. The moment he opens the door to the rest of the flat it feels like running headfirst into a wall of noise. As they make their way to the kitchen, Dan realises there aren’t that many people here. There are some guys and girls dancing, talking loudly over the frankly offensively noisy music playing.

As Chris hands Jimmy and Dan a beer each, Dan’s gaze moves to the quieter side of the living room area.

The moment he does, his heart freezes inside his chest.

Philip Lester. Dan couldn’t mistake that black hair and snow white skin and awkward posture. Still, Dan’s brain feels like a nearly completed puzzle that is coming loose at the sight of him here. He doesn’t fit here, in this part of his life, as a real person in the real world.

He is talking to another guy with brown curly hair and round glasses. They seem not to notice the other people in the quieter corner, talking amongst themselves. Philip may be at a party, but he looks just as strange and uncomfortable as he does at the clinic. His fingers are hooked into his jeans pocket. Something about it makes Dan feel like he can relax, just a little bit. He isn’t the only person who is awkward and out of place here.

It has only been two days since Dan signed Philip in for his therapy session last. Only two days since Dan smiled at him in the waiting room as if there was safety in that little bubble, as if Philip wasn’t a real person that existed outside of it.

Then Philip meets Dan’s eyes and Dan’s cheeks start to burn so hard he has to look away before he can register the look of recognition on Philip’s face.

He drinks some of his beer, just getting ready to follow Jimmy’s instructions and get to know Chris, when Jimmy looks past Dan and shouts over the music with a wide smile on his face.

“There he is! Get over here!”

Dan doesn’t realise he had been talking about Philip until he comes over to the kitchen island with the same guy by his side. The puzzle in Dan’s mind scatters further. Some pieces must be missing at this point. Dan lost the reference image.

Ending up at the same party is one thing. Jimmy actually knowing Philip is another.

Jimmy circles the kitchen island and hugs both Philip and his friend. Dan watches as Philip leans down to hug Jimmy properly. Their eyes meet once more. Dan can’t look away this time. This time, Philip’s mouth opens in surprise and he jerks back, making Jimmy stumble forward, until they’re both staring at Dan.

Philip is giving him a look as if he’s trying to figure out where he knows him from.

Dan would be an idiot to try to explain in front of all these people. Dan gets his foot in his mouth more often than not, but he knows better than to loudly proclaim that someone else goes to therapy.

“Dan, this is Phil,” Jimmy says, a weird flare affecting his tone as he looks between the two of them. “And there’s PJ.”

“Oh!” Philip exclaims then. “Dan! Daniel!”

A laugh is shocked out of Dan as Philip then seems to realise that he might not want to tell everyone how they know each other. Jimmy joins him in laughing, and Phil’s concerned expression is replaced with a smile.

“Share with the class?” Jimmy asks expectantly.

“Um,” Dan says, quirking an eyebrow at Philip.

Philip quirks an eyebrow right back. They laugh.

They haven’t ever really talked, but right now Dan feels as if he is exchanging inside jokes with an old friend. There is something soothing about Philip’s nervous but easy smile.

“I’ll explain later,” Dan says then, just to save Philip the trouble. “It’s. Yeah. Hi.”

Philip’s worried brow smooths out and a silence stretches between them that no amount of party noise could fill.

“You’re being fucking weird,” Jimmy says, no venom to his voice.

“Hey,” Philip scolds.

Jimmy rolls his eyes.

“He can take it,” he says, gesturing towards Dan.

“That I can,” Dan agrees with an awful wink.

Philip laughs, eyes bright and smile full of teeth. He ends up covering that wonderful smile with his hand. Dan feels an impulse to pull it away. People don’t usually laugh at his jokes like that. People don’t understand that his jokes are jokes, most of the time. Philip, amazingly, seems to.

Jimmy gives a small chuckle.

“Weird,” he concludes with a shake of his head.

The party isn’t as harrowing as Dan first thought it would be. He ends up on the sofa making conversation with Chris while Philip, PJ and Jimmy look to be engulfed in a conversation of their own. Dan notices Chris’s nervous quirks even though Chris slurs his words, affected by the alcohol. He laughs at his own jokes and shifts in his seat and sometimes he gets this look in his eyes as if he thinks that Dan is a predator, ready to attack.

Dan doesn’t attack. He listens as Chris tells him that he recently moved into this flat that he shares with _Phil_ , as they all seem to call him, and that tonight is meant to celebrate that fact. Dan hums in response while he keeps looking over at Philip. Sometimes he gets a glance and a nervous smile back.

It is hard to view this flat as a home when it’s filled with people and music and alcohol. Still, Dan notices board games in the book shelf next to the TV as well as a PS4. Dan was right to peg Philip as a nerd, then.

He forces himself to focus on Chris.

“Funny,” he says. “This is a housewarming party, then? Jimmy quite explicitly said we were going to a gay party, whatever that means.”

Chris grins.

“A _gay_ party?” he asks.

Dan shrugs awkwardly.

“Maybe he said that to get you to come with, yeah?” Chris wiggles his eyebrows exaggeratedly.

Dan’s insides twist with something satisfied and uncomfortable at the same time. Some more puzzle pieces go missing. He doesn’t know how to acclimate himself to the combination of his and Jimmy’s weird thing, and ending up in a patient’s home, and a new person kind of flirting with him, and wondering if he is allowed that. There’s too much to wrap his head around. Dan feels like whatever he says tonight, to anyone, will somehow be incorrect.

“Maybe,” Dan agrees. “I am here, after all.”

He smiles as Chris laughs.

“I would have done the same, truth be told,” Chris says.

It doesn’t feel as much like flirting when Chris gets up immediately afterwards to get another drink. Dan is alone on the sofa, trying to figure out how Philip and Jimmy know one another, wishing there was a cute guy making moves on him to distract him from it even if it is uncomfortable.

Dan gets up before Chris returns, escaping to a corner of the probably decently sized living room that feels suffocatingly small right now. He gets his phone out of his pocket and stares at it without seeing as he tries to gather his thoughts. He can’t tell if he is having fun or not. He promised himself he would leave if it wasn’t fun, but he forgot how difficult it is to know what that means in moments like these.

He didn’t expect to see Philip here, though. He didn’t expect to find out that Jimmy is good enough friends with him to brighten upon seeing him and pull him in for a hug. Two things that seemed to exist in such completely different places in his life have melded into something confusing. 

Dan puts his phone back in his pocket, but stays in the corner. The noise is still noisy, but it stops feeling as all encompassing after a couple minutes. Dan’s lungs open up a tiny bit.

He stands up straight, getting ready to find Jimmy, when Philip meets his eye. He is walking a straight line towards Dan. Dan freezes. His slowed down heart starts racing again.

There is nothing threatening about Philip’s energy as he stops in front of Dan with that friendly smile on his face.

“Hi,” he says, simply.

Dan takes a moment to look at his face. To try to figure out if it is different here than it is at work. To know how weird this is.

Despite nerves, Phil’s expression is as open now as it always is. The contrasts are just as breathtaking. His nervous disposition is still so endearing.

All things considered, this doesn’t feel nearly as weird as it probably should. Dan smiles.

“Hi,” he says.

They look at each other, attempting a psychic discussion on how to take the conversation from here. Philip’s mouth twists into a smug smile.

“Did you know that there is russian word for meeting a kind-of-stranger-kind-of-not in an unexpected place?” he asks.

Dan’s mind completely blanks.

“What? Really? What is it?”

Philip bursts out laughing. His tongue sticks out between his teeth and Dan stares at him, dumbfounded.

“I’m joking,” he giggles, utterly overjoyed at his own bad joke. “I mean, there might be, I don’t know.”

Dan shakes his head in exasperation despite the smile that seems to have taken permanent residency on his face just from Phil’s near proximity.

“I wonder if there’s a russian word for the feeling you get when an almost stranger has the weirdest ice breaker when you see them in an unexpected place,” he says.

Phil’s shoulders relax and he leans against the wall. He crosses his arms over his chest and looks at Dan with some new distance, as if trying to figure him out.

“I wouldn’t know,” Phil says, giving Dan a slow up and down. “How does it feel?”

Dan quirks an eyebrow. Phil quirks one right back.

“It feels good,” Dan says.

Phil’s eyes pan down, then quickly back up at Dan’s face. He looks at him comfortably, as if this is a back and forth they’re used to.

“I think so, too.”

Dan doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he laughs. Phil’s bright blue eyes are trained on him, burrowing underneath Dan’s skin. 

The puzzle puts itself back together, slowly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Melodia Africana II by Ludovico Einaudi  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	17. Chapter 17

Dan can’t remember the last time he woke up the morning after a party feeling refreshed.

He barely had anything to drink. He made actual conversation with people he might actually have more than one thing in common with. He didn’t have a panic attack.

Something clenches inside Dan’s chest as he makes the realisation. He didn’t have a panic attack.

It doesn’t feel like being proud, not really. He can’t tell whether he is worried that the absence of panic means there is worse panic coming up, or whether he is glad to not have had to deal with it this time. Susanne always says to focus on the latter. The former is catastrophizing; a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Dan gets out of bed, careful not to wake Jimmy up where he is sleeping so close to the wall he might as well break through it. Dan’s bed isn’t made for two people.

Dan puts the coffee on and gets in the shower. He takes his meds in the bathroom. He wouldn’t necessarily hide the fact that he takes them from Jimmy if it came up, but it isn’t a conversation he cares to will into existence.

He stays in the shower for a bit longer than average. He has to take advantage of the moments of solitude he gets after a night like that. Dan hadn’t wanted Jimmy to follow him home, but Jimmy was drunk. Dan has too much experience with how unreasonable people get when they are drunk to ask Jimmy to go home. It feels okay to think about that underneath the warm stream of water. It doesn’t feel as sharp, remembering the embarrassment that made him sweat when he attempted to be covert about their sleeping arrangements before they left the party. Jimmy was too loud and Dan felt trapped and Phil looked at them like he was really seeing them for the first time.

Whatever Phil thinks he saw, Dan knows that he is wrong.

Dan stays in the shower for just a little longer. It makes it easier to fight the tremors in his hands as he needlessly wonders how much Phil knows about him and Jimmy, and why it even matters to Dan if he knows anything.

Dan leaves the bathroom only wearing his black boxer shorts. Jimmy is already awake. He has helped himself to a cup of coffee that he is drinking on the bed. Dan feels a tug at his heart. Jimmy made the bed. It isn’t as neat as Dan would have made it, but he made the bed.

“Good morning,” Dan says as he takes to the small kitchenette and pours a cup for himself.

Jimmy glances at him quickly, then full on ogles him when he realises that Dan is practically naked.

Dan isn’t much for showing off his body, but this doesn’t feel like exposing himself. He is used to Jimmy’s presence enough to behave somewhat like he does alone when Jimmy is around now.

Dan sits down next to Jimmy on the bed and feels his forehead with the back of his hand. Jimmy looks into his eyes with a feeling that Dan feels hesitant to take in.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, retrieving his hand. “Hungover?”

Jimmy shrugs.

“I’m alright,” he says.

The silence feels unsettling. Jimmy sips his coffee carefully and Dan feels sorry for him. He doesn’t know what to feel sorry for, but he does.

“Anxious?” Dan asks.

Jimmy puts his cup down on the nightstand. He has to lean over Dan to reach it, and once he has successfully put it away he slumps against Dan’s chest and takes hold of his side. Dan puts his own cup away and puts his arm around Jimmy’s shoulders, keeping him in place.

“I guess that’s what it is,” Jimmy mumbles. “I didn’t get that drunk. But I was still an idiot.”

Jimmy’s voice sounds so soft. Dan got used to the sharp edge of it last night, now it sounds so heartbreakingly delicate that Dan fears that anything could break it.

“What makes you say that?” Dan asks.

He doesn’t want to assume it has to do with him, but when Jimmy looks up at him and there is no doubt in Dan’s mind that it does. He leans down and kisses Jimmy’s forehead.

“We’re fine,” he says.

What _we_ is in this situation is undecided. From the looks of it right now, _we_ is more than just ‘friends who fuck sometimes’.

The look on Jimmy’s face when Dan reassures him is more than that.

He doesn’t respond. He attaches himself to Dan like a koala, and Dan holds him because that, apparently, is what he needs. He breathes with him even though his limbs are waking up and he wants to keep them awake. Jimmy’s warmth is so inviting. It fills part of a void that Dan didn’t realise was starting to open up last night.

“You smell really good,” Jimmy sighs.

Dan smiles into his hair.

“I just had a shower,” he says.

“That’s not it.” Jimmy looks up at him. “It’s more like a general Dan smell.”

Dan laughs.

“That sounds really gross,” he smiles.

Jimmy buries his nose in the crook of Dan’s neck and breathes in hard.

“It isn’t,” he says on the exhale. “It’s the opposite of gross.”

Dan wills himself not to get hard but it’s an impossible feat when Jimmy just gets closer and closer, in every way possible.

“Jimmy.”

Jimmy smothers the warning tone of the word with his mouth, kissing Dan like it’s the only thing he ever wants to do.

Dan lets it happen. If this is what Jimmy wants to do right now, he will do it. At least it feels good.

-

**irregularsymbol** : hi! we decided on a date. we’re thinking two weeks from now. friday the sixth at 10pm.

**irregularsymbol** : you’ve been invaluable to us so if that time doesn’t work for you i think i could get a certain neurotic bird to change his mind.

Dan has work on Fridays at ten. He can’t wrap his head around being any type of asset to them, still. All he really has done is test out server capacity, and figured out how to give the creators a sort of public private chat for people to read while the announcement happens. It is an easy task once you get around to it, but then again the Fall Whisperer team is small. Dan can take in the fact that him doing it takes some stress off of them.

But then irregularsymbol messages him things like that, alluding to Seagull, and it makes him forget anything of value he’s ever done because suddenly his mouth tastes like stomach acid.

**achromatic_bot** : that time works! no need to convince him lol!

Dan can get time off. He would fight tooth and nail for time off, to be honest. Even if he didn’t have any part of it like he does now.

**irregularsymbol** : ok i’m glad! we’re announcing it this friday. we thought we’d give you a shout out in this little poster thing that triangle’s made for it. do you want your nick or real name on there? if not then we’ll just put your sprite or something

It blows Dan’s mind that Triangle even knows his nick or sprite and would include it in his artwork.

**achromatic_bot** : i’d rather not have my nick there, or name even though you don’t know it anyway, but uh yeah thank you so much i can’t believe you even considered it

**irregularsymbol** : of course!! don’t be stupid lol! 

Dan laughs.

**irregularsymbol** : i have to go but i’ll hear from you on friday right?

Dan has actively not thought about Friday since irregularsymbol first talked to him about it. Regardless, he responds.

**achromatic_bot** : sure thing

It seems odd to him, that the words look so cold when in reality he is nothing but a keysmash and a thousand crying emojis.

-

On Thursday, Dan’s head is full of clouds. Despite not seeing Jimmy since Sunday, he has continued to mess up his schedule and inevitably fallen down a hole of obsessing over Fall Whisperer as a means to avoid thinking. While it works for its intended purpose, last night’s work shift left Dan feeling sore and exhausted to the point that one of his coworkers pulled him into a private room before the end of one of his breaks.

Dan had winced at the sympathetic look on her face. Fixating on a computer screen and a fake world for hours on end makes his focus so wobbly he feels as if he is stumbling through everything. Walking strange and forgetting how to meet another person’s smile. He is fully removed from his life, viewing the world through the piercing gaze of the spectator. Mary had squeezed his arm and tilted her head up at him.

“Are you feeling poorly?” she asked.

She let go of his arm as Dan shook his head. He crossed his arms over his chest, wrapping himself up to protect himself from her naked concern.

“I’m a bit tired,” Dan had supplied. “Other than that I’m okay.”

As Dan walks out of the changing room today, Mary catches his eye from the break room once he passes it. She raises her eyebrows at him. Dan stops in his tracks, unsure of whether she means she wants to talk or just nod as a passing greeting. The spectator cringes from its corner when Dan approaches her.

“Are you certain you’re able to work today?”

She says it in her usual kind and gentle tone, but it stings like a needle. Dan is half a person, only motivated to work by his desire to appear normal and well off to his peers. 

But Dan works next to counselors and therapists and psychiatrists three days of the week, and some of them are pretty damn perceptive despite Dan’s best attempts to keep up appearances.

The maternal air around Mary doesn’t help one bit. It reaches to a place within Dan that hurts.

“Yeah,” Dan says through a forced smile. “I’m alright. Better today, actually. And how are you?”

He makes sure to sound as chipper and upbeat as he possibly can, which for Dan in this state results in sounding vaguely interested. Mary smiles back, but her eyes are if possible even sadder, even more sympathetic to his current state.

She responds, though. She responds and she lets him leave without all that much fuss.

Dan swallows the thick lump in his throat and blinks back the tears threatening behind his eyes as he closes the door to the receptionist area and sits down at the seat, barely looking at the person who was working before him as she says goodbye.

Dan retreats to his barely-there autopilot mode to make it through the workday. He might call in sick tomorrow. The thought is relieving enough to give him some strength to keep going. If he is going to feel like this any more he really just needs to fuck off and sleep for a while in order to regain some real world focus.

The real world focus comes crashing down on him after lunch, when Phil enters his field of vision.

He opens the receptionist window as Phil approaches. His smile is different today. This smile is asking to be looked at.

Dan smiles back, he thinks. He can’t really tell.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Dan says, to pull himself out of his own head.

“You too,” Phil grins.

Dan looks into bright blue eyes and the tension in his body leaves momentarily. He takes a breath.

“Rough day?” Phil asks, a tilt to his head.

It doesn’t feel like when Mary asks. It doesn’t sound like when Jimmy asks.

There is room for honesty here.

“Yeah,” Dan says, signing in Phil for his appointment with Eric absentmindedly.

Phil taps his fingers on the shelf on the other side of the window.

“Sorry to hear that,” he says.

Dan feels capable of a real smile, even if it’s small.

“It’ll pass. Reckon I just need to rest a little bit.”

It doesn’t seem as daunting when he says it to Phil.

“I hope that you will,” Phil responds.

Dan meets his eyes once again. There’s an ease to Phil, a quiet confidence, that Dan caught a glimpse of at the party on Saturday but can zone in on properly now. How did he not notice that confidence before?

“Any russian words for me today?” Dan asks.

Phil actually _giggles_ , his pale cheeks flushing pink. His tongue manages to poke out through his teeth before he hides his smile. Dan hates that he hides it.

“If I think of any I’ll let you know,” Phil says.

Dan breathes a laugh. Phil points his thumb to the waiting area.

“Guess I shouldn’t be clogging the reception, yeah?” he says.

“Yeah,” Dan says even though he wants to say _no one is here, no one would mind_.

Phil goes to the red armchair next to the potted plant and crosses his legs as he stares at Dan pointedly. Dan closes the window and stares back with a laugh.

Maybe Dan won’t call in sick tomorrow after all.

-

The hour before Phil returns to the waiting room goes by surprisingly fast. He is signing in a young woman when he watches that black quiff in his peripheral until it stops. He quirks an eyebrow. Phil meets his eye from where he is standing queued up behind her, tapping his foot restlessly. The young woman goes to sit down on Dan’s cue as she always does. 

Dan looks at the time. The hour went by fast because it hasn’t been an hour. It has been thirty minutes, and here Phil is again walking up to the window.

“Hello?” Dan says, unable to mask his confusion.

The restlessness in Phil changes at that. His forehead smooths out and he gives a polite smile. Dan can tell it isn’t real because now he knows what his smiles actually look like.

“I’ve really got to go,” Phil says, skipping past the pleasantries. “But I was wondering if you wanted to come to mine this Saturday?”

Dan’s heart certainly stops for a miniscule moment.

“I mean,” Phil laughs, his real smile peeking through, “mine and Chris’s. We’re having Jimmy coming ‘round and I know you guys are close so it could be fun.”

_I know you guys are close._ Dan swallows, trying to see any tells on Phil’s face as to what that means. Whether he knows that him and Jimmy are _close_ close or not.

The memory of Saturday night spikes painfully in Dan’s stomach, the way Phil had looked at them when Jimmy insisted on sleeping at Dan’s. He hadn’t said anything explicit, but his tone had said enough. The way he touched Dan’s cheek had said enough. 

Phil definitely knows. Dan fucking hates that he knows.

“Chris is new to London, so,” Phil says with a shrug when Dan doesn’t immediately respond. “He needs to expand his circle a little bit.”

Dan’s circle is small and tight for a reason. Jimmy coming back to his life was an unwelcome change that Dan has had to grow accustomed to.

But there is no spectator around when the answer comes out of Dan, clear as day.

“Sure,” Dan says with a flick of his wrist. “I think I can make it.”

He shouldn’t do this. He shouldn’t wade deeper into Jimmy’s life and he shouldn’t pursue a friendship with Phil. His life is complicated enough as it is.

“That’s great,” Phil says, stalling.

Dan feels the nerves start to crawl around inside. He isn’t sure whether he is enjoying this silence. He isn’t sure whether he likes how bright and blue Phil’s eyes are. He isn’t sure whether he wants to look at how shiny and red his lips are.

Dan breaks their eye contact and Phil clears his throat.

“Anyway, I’ve got to go,” he says, as if he’d forgotten that he doesn’t have to stand here and stare at Dan for the rest of his appointment. “See you Saturday.”

He nods, twisting his heel to leave. Dan splutters, suddenly flustered.

“I said ‘maybe’,” he reminds him, a little too loudly.

The young woman in the waiting room looks up from her phone. Dan is scared about what she thinks she is seeing.

Phil turns back around, his real smile spreading on his face. Dan squints at him, holding back his own smile.

“See you Saturday,” Phil repeats.

This time when he turns around, he doesn’t look back. He keeps walking and the statement is left hanging in the air and Dan has no chance to dispute it.

It isn’t like Dan really isn’t coming. He just needs an easy out. He rarely says _yes, no doubt about it_ to an invitation. Maybe Phil can tell that that is what it meant. The spectator remains silent while Dan thinks about it, and he dares to think another brave thought; that maybe he kind of likes that Phil can tell.

-

The tentative slightly-better-than-before feeling stays in Dan’s chest on his way home. The night is eerie with the approaching autumn cold. Dan puts on his Fall Whisperer playlist as he hurries to the tube and thankfully manages to get there without being murdered.

Dan considers getting off at Jimmy’s stop for a second when the tube reaches his station. He watches the doors slide shut and looks away. He has promised irregularsymbol that he’ll be available online tomorrow, so his decision isn’t just based on the fear that Jimmy will think it is more than it really is.

The tube keeps going. Dan is almost home. He breathes out a sigh. He closes his eyes for a moment as the main theme for Fall Whisperer plays in his ears. It would be nice to go to Jimmy’s to relieve some tension. God knows he has a lot of that to relieve. But it isn’t just stress relief - it’s tensions going all over the place and Dan isn’t sure whether he is actually getting more stressed out by all of it in the end.

He trusts his decision to go straight home. He thinks about the fic Sam has been teasing, the one that is set after the new patch. It takes him through the fears that the streets never stop instilling in him.

When Dan starts to near his building he can see two people standing just outside of the main entrance. He takes a breath. It appears to be a guy and a girl, so he is safe there. Two guys is a more likely to result in violence. Still, there’s a tightness in his stomach upon knowing he has to walk past them.

Once he comes closer they turn around to face him.

Panic.

Lucy tosses her cigarette to the ground and puts it out with her shoe. Dan can barely make out Jimmy’s smile in the shadow but it’s there. Dan pushes the headphones off from over his ears and walks towards them. His heart is pounding so hard he can feel it in his fucking mouth.

“Hi, Dan,” Lucy says with a quiet rasp. “Just got off work?”

Once Dan stops in front of them, Jimmy puts his arm around his back. 

Dan jerks away instinctively.

Jimmy looks at him, quizzical to his reaction, and Dan wants to cry. He stares back into Jimmy’s eyes hoping to actually communicate what he is feeling for once. Fucking panic, and confusion, and down-right fear.

“Yeah,” Dan says when Jimmy keeps smiling at him, clueless.

Lucy looks between Jimmy and Dan and Dan wishes he would die. It’s too dark out. The flickering light above the entrance is too dull for him to really tell what Lucy might be thinking or feeling. Jimmy holds on to his side and the silence is awkward but the pounding of Dan’s heart makes it an effort to even stand upright, let alone make conversation.

“Are you alright?” Lucy asks.

Why do people keep asking him that? And why the fuck isn’t Lucy reacting to the way that they are standing right now; With Jimmy practically leaning on Dan like a love sick puppy?

“Bit tired,” Dan says, voice tight.

He manages to get out of Jimmy’s hold and begins walking towards the entrance.

“Was a bit eventful at work,” Dan says when he looks back.

It wasn’t, at all.

“I’m really ready to go to bed,” he says.

He isn’t. He is going to stay awake and try to manage the panic that isn’t going to get any easier to bear once he is inside his flat.

“Sure,” Lucy says, some distance in her voice.

“Well, you’re done aren’t you, Lucy?” Jimmy asks.

“Oh,” Lucy says. Dan thinks he can hear a laugh somewhere under the screeching anxiety in his ears. “Yeah, I am. Don’t worry, Dan, we’ll join you.”

Dan opens the front door and wishes he would die.

“Can’t let him venture into the lift on his own,” Jimmy agrees.

There’s that laugh again. When Dan presses the button to his floor he realises that it’s coming from Lucy.

The lights in the lift are almost blinding, even if they are shit. Dan misses the dark outside. He doesn’t want to see what Lucy might be feeling.

There is nothing strange about her expression. She looks completely at ease, albeit a bit worried about Dan. She squeezes his hand once they reach her floor, a sympathetic nod to her head.

“See you,” Jimmy says once she leaves.

Dan really feels it then. Jimmy didn’t get off with her. He has stayed, and Lucy didn’t bat an eye, and Dan is going to go insane.

An arm snakes around Dan’s back again and Jimmy leans in. His lips only manage to brush over Dan’s jawline before Dan twists back out of his grip with a bit too much force, so much that Jimmy stumbles backwards. He hits his shoulder on the wall. The impact sounds terrible.

“What the fuck?” Jimmy says, voice rising.

Dan can’t see past the panic. He opens the lift door, already at Dan’s floor, and Jimmy follows him out. Dan keeps walking. Walking, walking, walking.

“Dan,” Jimmy says, the upset apparent in his voice.

Dan doesn’t know why he is hurrying inside. Apparently, they have nobody to hide from anymore. Apparently, nothing in Dan’s life can make sense, ever. Still, Dan makes it to his flat silently, Jimmy at his heel.

He can barely open the door, his hands are shaking so hard.

Jimmy slams the door shut behind them. Dan jumps at the sound.

“Sorry,” Jimmy says. “My shoulder fucking hurts.”

“Sorry,” Dan says, almost like an echo, remembering faintly that that is actually his fault.

Jimmy takes Dan’s face in his hands and looks into his eyes. The pressure of Jimmy’s hands are enough for Dan to unclench his tight jaw, to release some breath.

“What is wrong?” Jimmy asks.

His tone is so serious that Dan wants to cry.

“I’m just tired after work.”

His voice is flat for someone that is currently trying to push away an elephant-sized panic attack with a twig.

“Okay,” Jimmy says. “We’ll go with that.”

It’s patronising. Dan feels the shame down to his toes. But Jimmy still holds him, and something about that has stopped the world from swirling around in a chaotic mess. It shouldn’t be that strange, really. Jimmy is the source of the chaos. Of course he can manipulate it in any way he wants to.

Jimmy leans in and Dan feels a kiss on his mouth. His chin wobbles as he tries to manage the overwhelming rushing inside of him from spilling over.

“Let’s go to bed,” Jimmy whispers as he pulls away.

Dan watches Jimmy take off his clothes and make himself comfortable under the duvet. Dan shakily undresses down to his underwear. Jimmy holds the duvet up for him, arms held out in a way that could look inviting under different circumstances.

Right now, as Dan goes into Jimmy’s suffocating embrace, it feels like a straitjacket.

Jimmy kisses his neck. Apparently they’re done talking. Apparently, Dan is fine now. Dan reciprocates just enough so that Jimmy’s feelings won’t get hurt, then attempts his most apologetic tone.

“I really am tired,” he says. “Sorry.”

Jimmy shakes his head with a smile.

“‘S fine,” he says. “I just like falling asleep with you.”

That’s good, Dan thinks as Jimmy turns around and makes himself comfortable as the little spoon. Not that Dan is even going to fall asleep, but that is good. For Jimmy.

The panic attack has been put on hold. Instead Dan remains on edge, holding Jimmy, in a bed that isn’t fit for two people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Every You Every Me by Placebo  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr?si=7pXe88vRThSe6eR3IeyVCg)


	18. Chapter 18

Jimmy stirs next to him. Dan wipes his eyes and sniffs, trying to rid his face of evidence of being anything less than perfectly content.

Two hours. Two hours of sleep. Three hours of willing his brain to shut up enough to actually fall asleep, and two hours of being awake with a needy bladder and a panic attack peeking through just enough to make him cry.

Jimmy slept soundly through the night. He rolls over, slowly waking up, face puffy from sleep as he reaches out for Dan. He ends up grabbing Dan’s shoulder. It’s weak, but it’s there, and for a moment Dan can almost appreciate how adorable Jimmy looks in the morning. It hurts to think about that for too long so Dan stops. He puts his hand over Jimmy’s and traces a thumb over the knuckles.

“Mmh,” Jimmy huffs.

Dan breathes in slowly through his nose, then out through his mouth. Hopefully it sounds more like sleepy breathing than an attempt to stay sane.

“Sleep well?”

Dan’s voice sounds so low and rough he surprises himself. It still affects a flat tone, though, eerily void of emotion.

“Mmh,” Jimmy repeats, eyes closed. He squeezes Dan’s shoulder. “D’you?”

Dan can’t stop himself from releasing a frustrated sigh.

“Yeah.”

He pats Jimmy’s hand and sits up. He won’t be able to get any more sleep while Jimmy is here. He might as well start his day, whatever the fuck that means.

“No,” Jimmy protests as Dan moves to stand up.

He manages to get a hold of the waistband of Dan’s underwear and pulls Dan towards him. Dan sighs again, grabs Jimmy’s wrist decidedly until he lets go.

“Ow,” Jimmy complains with a small voice. His eyes are innocent, almost apologetic, when he looks up at Dan. “You’re hurting me.”

Dan swallows. He releases the grip and moves his fingers faintly over the area, before they travel up Jimmy’s arm.

“How’s your shoulder?”

The reminder stings, but he has to ask now that he is thinking about it. Dan reaches the shoulder and feels the muscle. Jimmy practically hisses when Dan moves over a certain spot. He immediately releases the pressure, nausea swirling in his stomach.

“It’s fine,” Jimmy says as he exhales. 

Dan’s throat goes dry and his eyes fill with tears.

“No, it’s not.”

His voice wobbles enough to catch Jimmy’s attention. Jimmy sits up immediately, puts his hands on Dan’s cheeks, keeping him still as he looks into his eyes, searching for answers. Dan closes his eyes. He doesn’t want Jimmy to see.

“I’m fine, really,” Jimmy says. “You didn’t mean to do it. The worst it’ll do is bruise and that’s nothing. I’ve done stupider shit to myself.”

Dan chokes out something between a laugh and a sob. Now that the tears are running again he feels helpless trying to fight them. He does feel bad that he hurt Jimmy, but that’s not why he is crying. It hurts that much more that Jimmy doesn’t realise that.

“Dan?” Jimmy asks, voice sweet, like he’s talking to a child. “Look at me?”

Dan feels a pang of anger as he inhales through his nose. He grabs Jimmy’s hands and pulls them down off his face. He waits five seconds before he opens his eyes, hoping it is enough time to stop him from glaring.

“You have such pretty eyes,” Jimmy says.

He kisses him. Dan pulls away, faking a chuckle.

“It’s okay,” he says. “You don’t have to do that.”

Jimmy squints at him in suspicion. Dan isn’t ready to talk about last night. Jimmy’s eyes are filled with last night.

“I’m just,” Dan says, flicking his wrist as he tries to gesticulate what he can’t put into words, “having an off day. Brain-wise. Bad brain, you know?”

Something clicks then. Dan can see it when it happens, when a question on Jimmy’s mind is somehow answered and he shuts his mouth and nods thoughtfully.

“Oh,” is what Jimmy says in response.

Dan stops himself from wincing at the sound. He chose to make it about that. As much as he doesn’t want to make that excuse, it is better than the confrontation he can’t have right now.

“Yeah,” Dan says, voice flat. “I have to pee.”

He escapes to the bathroom. He takes his pills. He doesn’t shower.

When he walks out, Jimmy is standing right outside the bathroom door. Dan barely has time to react before Jimmy takes a hold of his arms and rests his forehead against Dan’s. The gesture is so intimate that Dan almost feels it.

“Your brain isn’t bad,” Jimmy whispers.

The swirl of panic makes itself known but Dan stops himself from gasping for air when his throat goes tight.

Jimmy kisses him, and takes a step back. Dan releases his breath. Another wave of panic staved off and saved for later.

“I’m gonna,” Jimmy gestures towards the bathroom. “I’ve got work.”

The relief Dan feels is so great that he almost laughs out loud. Instead he keeps his expression neutral, steps out of Jimmy’s way, and goes to the kitchenette as he listens to the water turning on.

-

_hi what’s up?_

Dan looks at the notification. He won’t open the message. He doesn’t want it to be marked as ‘read’. He keeps forgetting to turn that bloody function off.

Lucy is smart, Dan will give her that. She isn’t like a lot of people he knows, that jump straight to the matter at hand and thus minimise Dan’s chances at responding by ninety five percent. He doesn’t deserve her soothing tactics, but Lucy is a better person than Dan is. She doesn’t attack. She doesn’t push people away when things get hard. Dan is lucky to have her in his life. So lucky he is spoiled, he reckons. Why would he jeopardize a friendship like that otherwise?

Dan swipes the notification away. He can’t talk to her now. 

-

Dan’s mind is swimming with Jimmy by the time irregularsymbol adds him to the group chat. He is thinking about last week’s party. He is thinking about Jimmy and his relationship with Lucy. He is thinking about all of the things that Jimmy hasn’t told him, and how little that seems to matter to him. He is thinking about tomorrow, and Phil’s invitation to hang out.

**Seagull** : Squawk.

Dan wills his lungs not to deflate.

**TriangleNoses** : We ready?

None of this makes any actual sense.

**irregularsymbol** : I am!

Dan simply stares in amazement as the messages come, one after the other. He can’t believe he has access to watch them interact in private like this. The grey bubbles stack and the profile pictures he has seen on his timeline for two years appear next to them.

Dan is an adult. He has the sense to know that it isn’t healthy to idolise a person. It just seems difficult not to, when that person wrote a story that resonated deeply with Dan during a time that nothing else could. During a time in his life he would rather forget, if it weren’t for that story and those characters pulling some will to live he hadn’t known was in him out of him.

In this current moment, the person behind all of that is a grey bubble on Dan’s screen and Dan is expected to somehow treat him like an equal.

**irregularsymbol** : Chrome? You there?

Dan’s mechanical keyboard clicks loudly as he types out his response.

**achromatic_bot** : yeah!

**irregularsymbol** : ok, i’ll share the pdf for the stream, give me a sec

The chat falls silent. Dan has every opportunity to reach out, to say something that communicates just how much this means to him. As Dan scours his brain for something along those lines that won’t make him look like a cringey fanboy, he falls short. Suddenly, all of it seems to matter less.

Irregularsymbol attaches a file that Dan opens. He can barely take in the information. Times and codes and what looks like a script for the creators to follow. Dan will take his time with it later. He goes back to the chat.

**achromatic_bot** : so is there something i should do during the actual stream?

**Seagull** : It’d really help to have you available if something doesn’t go according to plan! :)

Dan wills his heart to stop beating so hard, but his hands are shaking.

**achromatic_bot** : yea ofc

**irregularsymbol** : thought you could be part of our gc while the event is going and if people are slow you could nudge them with some clues

**TriangleNoses** : They’re not supposed to know you’ve got insider info though, but I think people know you as that person that cracks the codes before anyone else anyway so I don’t think they’ll suspect anything

**achromatic_bot** : am i getting insider info? Lol

**Seagull** : The PDF pretty much explains everything.

It doesn’t make sense that Dan is the one that actually gets to know the meaning of Seagull’s cryptic messages, of all people.

**irregularsymbol** : are you ready to post the announcement seagull?

**Seagull** : Ready!

Dan holds his breath.

-

A couple hours into the game, they player finds out that the ability to communicate with the shadows is supposed to go away at age ten, and that the character you play in Fall Whisperer is a young adult who never lost that ability. They are one of the few people throughout history who has remained cognisant with that part of themselves.They’re made famous and looked up to for their ability, but they all inevitably reach the same decline. Their social skills fall short. There are records of some of them becoming mute. They all end up removing themselves from society, from prying eyes, from the lab that became their home. They aren’t useful if they can’t communicate. They aren’t useful if they can’t provide progress to the research. So once they prove to be worthless enough, the lab lets them go, as if it never happened.

“There’s more of us than they know,” White tells your character.

They are deep inside the cave, dizzy from the crystals surrounding them. They are too powerful to touch, much less attempt to transfer between realms.

“Most of us just pretend that we lose the ability like everyone else,” White goes on. 

He sits down next to your character inside the ring of Dye’s shadow preventative plants. Dye calls it protection. White refuses to.

“When we get the choice between the lab and living at home,” he goes on. “My dad made me hide it.”

You’re able to look through a series of pictures when White finishes speaking. They’re pictures of your own character, much younger than now, so small next to the big lab coats prying inside their mind. Your character hadn’t been able to fly under the radar. There’s an image of a woman wearing regular clothes, ushering your character towards an intimidating machine. That picture in particular made Dan’s stomach twist as he watched it unfold during his first playthrough.

Three dialogue options become available to you in this moment.

_> I felt a responsibility to help science along with my gift._

_> …_

_> My parents didn’t want me anyway._

Dan chose the third option.

White remained silent for a moment.

“None of us get to have a normal life, that’s for sure,” he ends up saying.

There is only the ambient sound of the glowing crystals, until a faint piano melody plays.

“Sorry about your parents,” White says. “I think that’s the story for most of you.”

By _you_ he means the famous ones, the ones that get the title. Whisperers. The ones that are stripped of any other options, doomed to experiments until they eventually decide to make themselves useless for the cause. It is the only way out.

The piano melody gets louder. White’s little pixelated form stands up, looking around hurriedly.

“I think it’s time,” he says. “Come on.”

Your character takes his hand. White helps you up on your feet.

-

After the announcement is posted, Dan is bombarded with messages. On the forum. On twitter. It appears no one missed that the sprite Triangle included is Dan. It isn’t drawn like the pixelated character, though. It looks like a real guy, with light skin and brown hair and brown eyes, standing vigilant, yielding his hard earned enchanted sword. Dan would make it his profile picture, but the amount of messages he is getting is unnerving enough for Dan to know he doesn’t want to invite anymore attention.

He responds to his server team mates, when they ask. They jokingly call him a traitor for not telling them sooner. It isn’t like Dan signed a non disclosure agreement, but he makes it seem like it when he explains himself. Everyone is making it up as more than it is, anyway. Dan deletes the empty threats people send him, the ones that want to “expose him” to the creators as a Dye and White fanboy that besmirches the story by reading fanfiction and interacting with the authors.

They don’t have proof. And besides, Dan doubts the creators have time to look at some petty fans’ attempts at creating drama. The conversation surrounding Dan dies out fairly quickly, and instead the attention moves on to the actual announcement.

An open server, opening next Friday, where the game’s creators will be present and reveal the future of Fall Whisperer. Questions will be answered regarding the recent patch. If Dan were in a different position, he would join in on the excitement and make up theories of his own. For the time being, Dan shuts off his PC and gets ready to go to work.

Lucy’s notification taunts him as he looks at his phone. He sighs and opens the message on the tube, deciding to finally type out a response.

_I’m good! Wbu? Are you free on Sunday?_

His choice to disclose that him and Jimmy have been hanging out might have been taken from him, but in a moment of bravery Dan decides to approach it like White. He can’t do anything about that now. He can only do the best he can with what he’s been dealt, and even though that hurts, Dan has spent enough time in the garden as of late to grow weary of the endless cycles. For once, something has to happen. There is no White to hold his hand, but Dan has to get to his feet anyway. The cave is dark and cold and scary, but at least it isn’t deceptive.

_I’m good too :) I’m free on Sunday! Come around for a coffee?_

Dan has every opportunity to decide against this.

_Hell yes :)_

-

When Dan returns to his flat after work, Jimmy is sleeping in his bed.

Dan would be startled. He would follow his thundering heart and panic over the trapped feeling, and what all of it means. Right now, Dan can only acknowledge his lack of emotion as he gets ready for bed. It is better than the alternative, but it lends way to something worse later on. Dan tells himself that it doesn’t matter as he lies down next to Jimmy, who sleepily squeezes Dan’s shoulder in greeting. As long as he can finally resolve this, the discomfort surrounding it becomes secondary. It is easy to think that now, when Dan enters that foggy lack of emotion repression grants him. Dan feels lucky to be able to think that anything is easy.

“How was work?” Jimmy asks sleepily.

Dan sighs.

“It was okay,” he responds.

Dan turns to look at him. Jimmy is beautiful, with his firm tan skin and smooth lips and long eyelashes. There is a reason Dan was drawn to him to begin with. They shared something silently for a long time before they could finally act on it, but the emotions surrounding it have become confused in the process. Dan isn’t looking at the same guy he did back then, when his heart pined after his best friend’s straight boyfriend. 

There is something much less intimidating about this Jimmy, when the pining has changed direction. Dan isn’t one to pine for, but Jimmy keeps ending up in his bed, and Dan knows it isn’t casual.

“How’s your brain?” Jimmy asks.

Dan easily suppresses the urge to cry once it arrives. He takes Jimmy’s hand and smiles humourlessly.

“Broken.”

Jimmy shakes his head.

“It isn’t.”

He sounds so very sure of this.

“I love your brain.”

He brings Dan’s hand to his lips and kisses the knuckles.

Dan stops himself from squirming. He squeezes his eyes shut.

“I can’t do this, Jimmy.”

Dan opens his eyes to a silence, but Jimmy’s sad eyes aren’t resentful like Dan expected. Instead he finds remorse there, an inner conflict that Dan feels responsible for.

“I know,” Jimmy says.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

Jimmy brushes his lips over Dan’s knuckles again. Dan feels it everywhere. He could indulge and undo the damage right now, but it isn't right. Jimmy deserves a whole person, a whole relationship. Dan can’t even give him even one of those things, no matter how hard he tries to. Dan is selfish, but even he realises that he can’t trap people inside his chaos and indecision forever. It is better to let them go before they leave. It is better to put a stop to it before Dan can do any more damage.

“I care about you,” Jimmy says.

The urge to cry is getting harder to suppress, especially when Jimmy is hardly suppressing his own.

“I care about you, too,” Dan says.

“So,” Jimmy says, clearing his throat and letting go of Dan’s hand, “we stay in each other’s lives. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Dan says. His voice doesn’t break, somehow.

“Do you want me to leave?” Jimmy asks.

Dan realises that right now, he is desperate for Jimmy to stay.

“No,” he says. “No.”

He moves closer. Jimmy regards him with a distance, but Dan is sure. He turns around, pulls Jimmy’s arm over his side, and sighs.

“I want you to stay,” Dan whispers.

Jimmy tightens the hold. Dan can feel his cheek between his shoulder blades. 

“I can do that.”

The conversation ends. Jimmy’s arms are no longer a straitjacket. Dan hasn’t stopped feeling trapped, but there is some sad version of relief inside that he decides to revel in.

The cave is dark and cold and scary, but at least it isn’t deceptive.

Before Dan tries to sleep, he checks his phone one last time. He has a new direct message.

**Seagull** : Thank you for helping out. We appreciate it a lot. Squawk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: The Movement Of A Hand by Bright Eyes  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	19. Chapter 19

Dan wakes up after Jimmy on Saturday morning.

Jimmy is just coming out of the shower when Dan sits up, rubbing his eyes. He looks away when Jimmy walks over to the desk chair next to the bed, grabbing the clothes he apparently tossed there last night before Dan came home.

Dan isn’t sure if there are any specific rules to abide by after you end the benefits part of a friends with benefits relationship, but Jimmy carelessly untying the towel from around his hips and stepping into his underwear is definitely not playing fair.

Escaping into the bathroom, Dan wills himself to forget the way that Jimmy’s eyes looked last night. It isn’t like a break up. Still, as Dan exits the bathroom and suffers through Jimmy’s awkward attempts at making conversation during breakfast, it does look an awful lot like the end of something.

Dan doesn’t want this to become anything like his and Haley’s relationship, with silent grudges and passive aggressive jabs and misplaced possessiveness.

It can’t really be like it is with Haley. Jimmy is difficult to resist because he is just that bloody good looking. What Dan realises, now that they have lost the autonomy to act on their more primal urges, is how little they actually know about one another.

What has value, when it comes to knowing someone? Dan may not know what Jimmy’s parents’ names are, but he does know that he gives amazing blow jobs. He may not know how many siblings he has, the details of his upbringing, or exactly what he studied at university, but he knows that Jimmy likes his hair played with when he falls asleep. In some sense, that seems to matter more. In another, it doesn’t seem to matter at all.

The conversations they have before Jimmy has to leave for work may only be stilted because the change to their relationship is still fresh. It could be as simple as that. But when Dan hugs him goodbye, Jimmy’s familiar narrow frame feels suddenly so estranged from him. Regardless of the fact that Dan knows just how tightly Jimmy likes to be hugged and for how long, Dan says goodbye to a different Jimmy than the one he said good morning to only yesterday.

All Dan and Haley had, when they were failing at their relationship, was friendship. Maybe Dan and Jimmy had the opposite. They had enough sexual chemistry to develop something, but the rest was lacking. Because Dan couldn’t let Jimmy in. 

Because Dan detaches.

Dan feels a strange mix of grief and relief fight for dominance within him for most of the day. Grief over the missed opportunity; a nice guy that was into him, and everything that could have been had Dan not had all those mental blocks that even the most patient person would have difficulty passing through, granted they even knew how to in the first place. The relief Dan feels is due to the part of himself he can tuck away again, now that it’s over. There’s no external force threatening to intrude on his most internal fears. Dan can take a breath, and push that harrowing realisation to the side.

He doesn’t fall in love.

Dan isn’t sure whether that is due to the fact that he can’t or because he doesn’t want to. He just knows that it never happens in the way that it’s supposed to, and never at the right time. He can feel when he’s at the cusp of it. Like that one night when they were having sex, when Dan was so close that it felt dangerous. Instead of letting himself fall, he turned that rush of emotion into a panic attack.

He falls in love at a distance. When all the threats are removed, Dan longs for Jimmy’s arms to wrap around him and for his scary, loving eyes to finally break through Dan’s barriers. He falls in love with the ideal version, an alternate universe in which Dan opened up and Jimmy didn’t run away screaming. It never would have happened that way, Dan knows, but he still thinks the thought. He still wishes so deeply that it would have turned out that way. But it didn’t. It couldn’t.

Then there is the spectator, seeing everything from the outside to the point that Dan can’t fully immerse himself into anything that’s real. Always on the outside, eyeing the flaws.

Dan enters the numbness before he knows it’s happening. He barely has time to process the heart aching hopelessness settling around him like formless, wispy, black ropes strapping his chest and arms and legs, before the details become blurry and he enters the fog that removes some of the hurt but inevitably invites a different type of suffering.

At many points in his life, Dan thought that indifference was bliss. In those moments, it was crucial to his survival. But now, when he has every opportunity to live the life that he wants to, the same survival technique that used to help him, hinders him. He can’t distinguish between what kinds of pain he should filter out and what kinds he can allow. So instead of risking it, any emotional discomfort causes Dan’s brain to default to the one thing it knows helps.

During periods of better mental health, Dan gets time to observe what happens and choose a different strategy to deal with the problem. Now, he has no time to scramble for some therapeutic tool Susanne taught him at some point. Dan is still aware that there are other options that he isn’t choosing, in some distant way, but he only needs to feel a small pang of worry about how he may be worse off than he thought for the indifference to fully set in.

It doesn’t matter. He is doing the bare minimum, feeling the bare minimum, and experiencing the bare minimum. He gets to live life on a surface level, and he should be thankful for it, because even that used to seem like an impossibility.

It doesn’t matter. Dan is hopeless. Dan can’t fall in love. Dan still can’t process and deal with negative emotion, and it doesn’t fucking matter at all.

-

**achromatic_bot** : you’re welcome except i should be the one saying thank you tbh. i feel honoured that you guys trust me enough to help :)

Dan has thought about what he would say to Seagull if he was given the chance to so many times that he now has several drafted self insert fics stored uselessly in his brain. Not one of them said something like this. None of his imagined scenarios included Dan making Seagull wait for a response for this many hours.

The PDF file about the stream is still unread in his Google Drive. He wants to read it when he has time to fully indulge. When he can sit back and remove all the stressors of life from his mind and exist in the place where Fall Whisperer is all there is and he can truly appreciate the fact that he gets to read another chapter of it before anyone else does.

That time isn’t now. Now, Dan’s phone buzzes, displaying Jimmy’s name.

“Hello?” Dan says.

“Hey,” Jimmy says. “Phil asked me to call you.”

Dan says nothing. For a moment, he almost forgets who Phil is.

“You-- okay,” Dan finally says, when Jimmy doesn’t care to fill him in.

“He said you’re coming tonight.” Jimmy sounds far away. His voice is still soft, but disengaged. “But he doesn’t have your number.”

Dan finally exhales.

“Right,” he says. “Right. Of course.”

“How do you guys even know each other?”

“He didn’t tell you?” Dan asks.

Dan isn’t the one that should answer that question, but he doesn’t want to be ambiguous and make Jimmy think something that isn’t true, either. He can’t figure out a plausible lie that Phil would be comfortable with. Because that’s the thing: He doesn’t know Phil well enough to know things like that. And yet Dan has been invited to spend an evening with him and some of his closest friends.

“No,” Jimmy says.

Dan leans back in his chair, feeling sweat form between his phone and his cheek. What the fuck does he say to that?

“How do you know Phil?”

He can’t remember if Jimmy told him that already, but it’s the first thing he can think of to say. When Jimmy doesn’t respond immediately, Dan swivels nervously in his chair.

“I mean I just remembered I haven’t actually asked and I’m curious but it’s fine if you wanna-”

Jimmy interrupts him with a chuckle. It’s genuine enough for Dan to shut up, because, fuck. He wants Jimmy to laugh and be his friend and not act like an ex.

“It’s fine,” Jimmy says. “We went to university together. Me, Phil and Chris did, actually. We rented a house with some other people at York.”

Jimmy had his first gay experience at university, is the first thing that Dan thinks. He reconnected with that person after he came out a year ago.

“Okay,” Dan says. “Um. What did Phil want you to say, again?”

“Oh, right.” Jimmy chuckles again. “He says to meet at his at six pm sharp, or else.”

“Or else what?” Dan asks.

“He didn’t say. He likes to be vague like that.”

Dan smiles to himself.

“Should listen though,” Jimmy goes on. “He can be scary when he wants to.”

The idea of Phil being that intimidating is entertaining, at least.

“Why’d he care enough to threaten me to come, anyway?” Dan asks.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy says. “Because you’re mates?”

They aren’t really mates. Phil is Philip Lester, a patient that says two words to him a week and has done for a couple of months now.

“Tell him I’ll be there at six,” Dan says before he has even really decided. “I’ve got to go.”

“Okay, but-”

“Sorry, something came up,” Dan interjects. “See you later.”

Dan hangs up, because he’s an asshole and Jimmy is lucky he dodged the bullet. It’s worth it to be an asshole in this situation, though, Dan reckons. Even if it is at an awkward point between him and Jimmy. Even if things are delicate, and Dan should really be more careful with how he talks to him if he doesn’t want things to get weird. But Phil deserves to tell his friends about going to therapy on his own terms, and that overrides everything else in Dan’s opinion.

_Six pm, or else._

Dan swivels on his chair and looks at the drafted forum post on his screen, with all the post-patch Fall Whisperer clues he has accumulated so far. He still has conclusions to draw and theories to reconsider. He might be taking more time with this than he usually does, but then not many things have followed their usual pattern recently. The PDF file that likely contains some of the answers Dan is looking for are in the tab next to it. He ignores it easily.

-

Dan doesn’t stop at Jimmy’s on his way to way to Phil and Chris’s flat this time. Because he knows where Phil lives. He knows that Phil goes to therapy. He knows that when Phil asks how Dan’s day is going, it isn’t an ice breaker, but a genuine question. Dan knows that Phil’s actual ice breakers are way more inventive, anyway.

There is a lot Dan _knows_ , but when Phil opens the door to his flat, Dan absolutely does not know how to greet him.

Phil is wearing a fitted navy blue shirt filled with small, white dots. He is wearing black skinny jeans, like always. His hair is getting long, but it’s styled into an effortless quiff that somehow doesn’t droop. Phil’s skin is so incredibly pale and lively at the same time. He doesn’t look drowned out. Instead, it serves as another contrast to complete his look. Dan has a hard time getting used to them. He isn’t used to seeing guys as nervous as Phil wear clothing this bold, and looking good doing it.

Dan is a little bit apprehensive, but those two seconds of uncertainty eventually pass because Phil steps forward and gives Dan a hug.

Dan catches a whiff of citrus and honey, barely registering how firm Phil’s back feels beneath his palm as he hugs back before he feels himself pull back, pushing the thoughts out of his head.

“I’m glad you came,” Phil says, watching Dan close the door behind himself.

Dan feels shy, glancing at the kitchen where Chris, Jimmy and PJ are all gathered together. Jimmy looks back at him, and it doesn’t take more than that for Dan to feel absolutely drained.

There’s a hand on his arm. It feels delicate and assured at the same time.

“Alright?” Phil asks.

His face is suddenly so close to Dan’s. Dan remembers he hasn’t smiled yet, but even remembering he doesn’t feel like faking it. Not yet. He looks Phil in the eyes and Phil’s hand slides off his arm. He nods like he understands. Dan can’t think of a reason why. His eyes must be guarded and his face must be expressionless. There is nothing there to see.

“We’ve got snacks,” Phil says gently.

Dan doesn’t really want snacks, but he does want to hear Phil keep talking like that.

“Yeah,” Dan says. “Sure. Sorry, I’m weirdly tired today.”

Dan looks back into the kitchen to notice that Jimmy is still looking in their direction. What Dan wants right now, what he aches for, is to rewind and undo last night so that things can quit feeling this odd. He wants to go back to when he was at his flat and reconsider. Dan doesn’t actually belong here.

He follows Phil into the kitchen, forces a smile on his face, and shuts his mouth after saying his initial hello’s. There are conversations going on around him that he can’t concentrate on, and every time Jimmy speaks the sound is sharp to Dan’s ears.

Dan knows damn well he isn’t acting like a normal person right now. A normal person would engage in their surroundings and look people in the eyes and stop tapping their foot. Dan knows exactly how to be a normal person, or at least appear like one, and despite that he finds himself once again doing the bare minimum.

Dan doesn’t miss the fact that Phil is looking at him every time he looks his way. He doesn’t miss that Phil’s gaze doesn’t waver, that he doesn’t pretend like he hadn’t been staring straight at him. Despite noticing those things, everything is muddled tonight. Everything, apart from Phil and his contrasts.

They sit on the sofas, with snacks and beverages at their disposal for most of the night. Dan learns that PJ is a failed engineer turned starving artist and that Chris is an ‘actor’, air quotes provided by Chris himself, and that every one of them thinks that university was a waste of time. Except for Phil. It seems to be like that a lot, when Dan thinks about it. Everyone thinks one thing and Phil thinks the other, and that is just how it is. No one questions it. It barely hurts when Dan tells them he didn’t go to uni himself. It usually hurts, but Dan can’t get himself to care tonight.

What he decides to care about is Phil’s reactions. Phil isn’t the most talkative out of the group, but he seems to be a big focus. Like a leader in disguise, on the sidelines, taking charge but not making a big deal out of it. He doesn’t always hide his smile. Sometimes he lets it shine bright on his face and Dan realises he is staring but he can’t stop himself. He knows a normal person wouldn’t do that, but tonight, Dan isn’t a normal person. Tonight, Dan is miserable and depressed and questioning whether he will ever feel like living isn’t an effort. So he stares when Phil smiles with his teeth because that, of all things, manages to resonate somewhere within Dan and reach to a place that doesn’t hurt.

They’re nearing the end of the night. Chris is leaning against PJ while PJ scrolls on his phone, and Jimmy is saying goodbye to Phil in the hallway. If Dan was smart he would leave now, at the same time as Jimmy, so they could talk a bit more and get further from the weirdness and closer to the actual friendship they might possibly get to have if Dan makes an effort.

Dan stays on the sofa opposite Chris and PJ and quietly marvels at their back and forth. They know each other through Phil, first introduced to one another about six months ago, but they’re talking like they’ve known each other forever. They move and touch like they’re best friends, acutely aware of one another’s comfort levels.

Maybe the amount of time you have known someone doesn’t have to matter that much, really.

When the front door closes, Chris looks at Dan so intently that, despite the layers of fog Dan has trapped himself under, he notices.

“What?” Dan asks.

Phil comes back and sits down next to Dan. He can no longer use Jimmy as a shield sitting between them, but then Phil raises his eyebrows at Chris and Dan wonders what the hell Jimmy would have had to shield him from.

“What was that?” Chris asks.

The silence feels tense.

“What was what?” Dan asks, and forces himself to laugh.

PJ slaps Chris’s arm absentmindedly as he keeps his eyes glued to the phone. There is something going on here that Dan hasn’t caught on to, and the way it forces him to actively engage in his surroundings causes anxiety to flourish inside his chest.

It gets like that. Either total disengagement or hypervigilance.

Chris looks at Phil, communicating something with his eyes. Phil smiles and shakes his head in exasperation.

“You’re really smooth, Chris, d’you know that?” he asks.

Chris crosses his arms over his chest.

“I’m just wondering!” he says. “There was something going on then.”

Phil shakes his head again and shoots Dan a glance. It’s quick, but Dan catches the comfort Phil intended.

“I don’t know what we’re talking about, sorry,” Dan says.

“He’s talking about you and Jimmy,” PJ says, still staring at his phone.

“What about me and Jimmy?”

Dan hears the aggressive tone before he remembers to put a reign on it. He isn’t angry, per se. He feels caught off guard, suddenly eyed and questioned by some of Jimmy’s closest friends. Dan doesn’t belong here. He should have left when Jimmy did.

Chris puts his hands up, eyebrows raised.

“Alright, I guess we’re not going there,” he says, laughing nervously.

It hurts to watch Chris retract. It hurts to see him try to smile through the embarrassment. Dan made that happen. Dan overreacted and made Chris feel bad about speaking freely. He promised himself he would never make someone else feel that way, a couple years back. The initial scratch of Chris’s forced smile now pierces Dan’s skin and makes a home underneath it.

Dan knows how to act like a normal person, he thinks. He can’t tell anymore. He hasn’t been doing a good job of it tonight, apparently.

“No, it’s--,” Dan sighs. “It’s fine.”

Chris puts his hands on his lap and nods, urging Dan to elaborate.

Dan has no idea how to elaborate.

He doesn’t actually know what these people know about him. What Jimmy has told them.

“I don’t actually know what we’re talking about either,” Phil interjects before Dan can stall for too long.

PJ laughs.

That says enough. That says that Phil knows exactly what they’re talking about.

“It’s not hard to put it together, really,” PJ says and finally looks up. “Last week, Jimmy went home with you after the party. This week, he barely looks at you the whole night.”

Dan frowns.

“So,” PJ goes on, completely disregarding the tension in the room, “something obviously happened between the two of you and now things are awkward. Yeah?”

That, at least, makes it sound like less than it is.

“Sure, yeah,” Dan says.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Phil interjects.

He is taking charge of the conversation again. He easily steers it away from Jimmy and Dan, and instead asks Chris and PJ about their ‘thing’. There obviously is no ‘thing’ between them to talk about, but it makes them laugh and joke around enough for the Dan and Jimmy conversation to be forgotten.

Dan finds himself looking at Phil in awe as more time passes. He is so different from the person he thought he was when he first came into the clinic. He was a mystery then, but Dan thinks he might be even more of a mystery now. He seems to handle everything with such an ease, and yet Dan catches the way Phil’s hands clasp and unclasp unevenly from time to time, like a soothing technique. Dan catches the quick glances Phil casts when he isn’t speaking, as if he has to make sure everything is going okay.

The clock is nearing midnight when Dan starts to get antsy. PJ is going to stay over, and there is no way Dan is going to. Phil would surely offer, but Dan can’t. He needs a night by himself, in his own bed, and maybe attempt to process some of what’s been happening as of late. He can’t do that here.

But then Saturday night in London is a scary place. Dan may lean into indifference, but that indifference won’t bite on the everpressing fear of danger looming around every corner he passes on his way to and from the tube. Just thinking about it where he is sat comfortably next to Phil on the sofa, when he is supposed to be engaging in the conversation, makes him feel sick to his stomach. He can’t handle another panic attack. Not when he is still recovering from the last.

“I should really get going,” Dan says.

He has no idea what conversation he just interrupted, but it makes PJ laugh. PJ seems to laugh a lot, though. Dan doesn’t really mind.

“You sure?” Phil asks. “PJ’s staying. You could-”

“No, I know, thank you.” Dan’s cheeks burn and he has no idea why. “That’s really nice of you, but I can’t tonight.”

It feels awkward to stand up and say goodbye to virtual strangers, after a night where he only said just enough to not be asked why he is quiet. Dan tries not to listen when the spectator tells him that they are relieved that he is leaving.

He tries his best to convince it that it’s wrong when both Chris and PJ stand up to hug him goodbye. The spectator doesn’t listen. The spectator knows how much people lie.

Dan turns to Phil with one arm out, expecting another hug goodbye, when Phil steps back. Dan’s heart starts racing for one second before Phil speaks.

“I’ll follow you to the station,” Phil says with a half smile. “Wouldn’t want you to get lost.”

Dan thinks he hears Chris hold back a laugh.

“That’s okay,” Dan says in a monotone voice. “I found my way here just fine.”

Phil shakes his head, the half smile turning into a full smile as he softly grabs Dan’s arm and leads him to the hallway with him. There is an ease to Phil, sure, but the amount of hospitality and kindness he is showering Dan with is downright suspicious at this point. It makes Dan’s stomach turn into knots. Dan is nothing but an inconvenience at this point.

“It’s different when it’s dark out,” Phil argues. “Last week you had Jimmy with you.”

Last week, Jimmy was pissed off his tits and absolutely not the person that was navigating their route to the tube station.

Only thinking about it now, Dan feels drained. Phil rubs his arm as if he can tell.

“Okay,” Dan says with a shrug that effectively pushes Phil’s hand away. “If you’re that keen.”

Phil giggles.

“I’m that keen.”

Phil’s hand clasp nervously.

Dan can’t stop himself from marvelling at the contrasts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Idiot by Sure Sure  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	20. Chapter 20

It is fairly ridiculous to be escorted from Phil and Chris’s flat to the tube station. They don’t live far from Jimmy. Dan knows the neighbourhood. The streets are narrow and they all look the same, but that is what every street in London is like. Dan has learned how to distinguish them from one another.

He knows the way to his location, and Phil still insists on accompanying him.

Dan expects to feel some type of relief when he finally exits the building, but even though the cool air of midnight fills his lungs and the promise of a night undisturbed is about to be fulfilled, he is still being pushed down by all of those layers of fog. Indifference towards negative emotion makes him indifferent to the positive, too. Dan isn’t sure if that is fair, but he doesn’t have the energy to care right now.

What he does have the energy to care about is the fact that Phil is wearing the silver coat.

“I really like that jacket,” Dan says as they walk side by side.

The moon is full and almost as bright as the sun shining down upon them. Dan hears Phil chuckle and immediately looks at his face. Sure enough, that wry smile manages to poke through the fog.

“Thanks,” Phil says, meeting Dan’s eyes.

Away from everyone else, Phil’s eyes are so unguarded that Dan almost feels uncomfortable. As if Phil is walking stark naked next to him, displaying himself with no shame.

They look like they do at the clinic. They look like the eyes that first drew Dan in. The openness of those eyes and the nervousness of that smile that made Dan create a fictional universe in his head in which Phil knew everything there is to know about Dan and still stayed.

Dan can’t think of a reason why he is someone that gets to see them unguarded.

“Feels weird, though,” Dan goes on. 

He does have the ability to fill an awkward silence with nonsense when he wants to, and at this point Phil has been so kind to him that he deserves more than Dan’s default state of total disengagement.

“How so?” Phil asks.

Dan glances at him.

“You always wear that to therapy,” Dan says.

The word drops like a bomb between them, if the way that Phil flinches at it is any indication. Dan swallows.

“To the clinic, I mean,” he recovers. “I guess I just think it’s weird that you’re that same guy that checks in once a week. Like, what were the chances that you’re mates with a friend of mine, right?”

Dan desperately hopes that that is enough to patch up the mess he might have made.

“I guess so,” Phil says absentmindedly. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

“I guess I’ll have to wear scrubs next time we meet outside the clinic so you get what I mean,” Dan says.

Phil laughs. Dan’s dead heart starts beating.

“That sounded way kinkier than I intended,” Dan jokes. “I promise I’ll be decent next time.”

Phil laughs. Dan dares to glance at him again. Phil glances back. They share a smile.

“Next time,” Phil echoes.

Dan is probably being presumptuous to think that Jimmy, the guy whose heart he just broke, would want him to come along and see his friends anymore. But the way Phil repeats the words sounds more like a promise than a question.

They’ll stay in each other’s lives, is what Jimmy said. Dan wonders if any of the words they said in that bed are true now, afterwards.

“Next time,” Dan says.

The words don’t sound believable anymore. Dan doesn’t have the energy to care about a lot right now, but he does care about that. The potential of there being no ‘next time’ meeting Phil, a stranger that Dan has no space for in his already tumultuous life, outside of work.

“Are you alright?” Phil asks.

They’ve arrived outside the station. The tube leaves in six minutes.

Watching the screen showing arrivals is like watching a ticking time bomb. Dan looks back at Phil and he feels himself slip up. He can’t be bothered to hide right now. He is overcome with an intense feeling of sadness that is taking hold, sure to cling and overstay its welcome.

Phil meets that sadness as if he knows it personally. He stares straight at it, but he doesn’t resent it. He doesn’t pity it. He just… acknowledges it.

He steps forward, into Dan’s personal space, and grabs Dan’s arm like he did in back in the hallway. He squeezes it the tiniest bit.

It should feel wrong to dare to display something so fragile. The sadness should have been put inside a box by now, saved for later, but Dan can’t seem to find the bloody box he usually stores his emotions in.

He is left to face reality. 

Right now, the reality is the contrast of Phil’s dyed black hair. It’s Phil’s snow white skin, and the colours that shift over it as traffic passes next to them. Blue, red and yellow.

“Probably not,” Dan says.

Colours keep shifting over Phil’s face like a canvas. As a sign on the other side of the street flickers on, Phil’s skin becomes covered in pink.

“I quit therapy because I was going through something difficult that I didn’t know how to talk about,” Dan says. “Now I feel like that was a bad idea.”

Someone bumps into Dan’s back as they pass him to go down the stairs to the Underground. Phil glances around, those quick little looks as if he’s scanning the area, and his hand drops from Dan’s arm. It is probably wise to do seeing as they are outside on a Saturday night in London. It isn’t worth the risk, but some part of Dan thinks it would be when he feels the absence of that hand as the words he just spoke grow heavy between them.

“So, there,” Dan says, to somehow smooth over the admission that Phil absolutely did not ask for. “We’re even. I felt bad knowing you see a therapist when you hardly know anything about me.”

He has no clue whether that works. It isn’t untrue, but it’s not why Dan told him. Come to think of it, Dan isn’t sure exactly why he told him.

Phil’s half smile is better than no smile, so Dan will take it.

“You say it like it’s a bad word,” Phil says. His face is blue now.

“What?”

“Therapy. You say it like it’s a shameful thing.”

Phil expression stays open and it shows no judgement. There is only curiosity. The blue gets replaced by red.

Dan looks down at his feet.

“I don’t mean to do that,” Dan says. “I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of.”

He dares to look back up to find that Phil’s face is reflecting pink.

“I guess I’m just a bit fucked up over it.”

It is true, but Dan isn’t sure why he’s telling Phil.

“Yeah,” Phil says. “So am I.”

Phil’s expression flickers with a sadness that Dan feels like he knows, personally.

It isn’t unruly like Dan’s, that much he can tell. It is contained, if how naturally it passes over Phil’s face and is replaced by something more neutral is any indicator. He isn’t putting on a mask, though. He just let that sadness flicker by, in front of Dan, and that matters a lot very suddenly. If Dan could contain his sadness right now, he would, but his is still here and it is still unmasked and Phil has to face it whether he wants to or not.

Well, he does have a choice. He could leave right now and turn his back to it.

“I have to go downstairs now if I wanna catch the tube,” Dan says. He might as well offer the opportunity to turn away from it.

Phil looks down the stairs in some surprise, like the reason they are standing next to the Underground had escaped him. Dan manages to smile.

When Phil looks back at Dan’s face there is no doubt in Dan’s mind that he means to ask Dan to go back to his. Dan steels himself for rejecting him. He prepares mentally. He is vulnerable and frail and sad, and the prospect of not feeling alone the night after he put an end to a could-have-been is entirely too tempting. He can’t make more mistakes. Phil is kind and a bit flirty and has an intriguing energy, but if Dan stayed over at his tonight he would try to get physical about it and that wouldn’t have anything to do with Phil’s and his chemistry, and everything to do with Dan’s increasing fear of the loneliness he will find back at home in his bed.

Then again, Phil’s gaze is so intense that Dan swears he can feel it, like a touch.

“Yeah,” Phil says. “You’re right. You better hurry.”

It stings for a moment, and then it doesn’t. Instead, Dan feels relieved to have that option taken away from him.

“Alright, uh,” Dan nods awkwardly. “Thanks for… following me here.”

Phil grins.

“You probably would have found your way anyway,” he admits with an easy shrug.

Dan presses his lips together and watches Phil’s skin in its original ivory, free from any other colours taking up space on it for the moment.

“No, I reckon I wouldn’t have, actually,” Dan says. “So, thank you.”

The grin is effectively wiped from Phil’s face and for the first time tonight, he avoids looking Dan in the eyes.

“No problem.”

He steps forward and raises his hand to pat Dan’s shoulder. The neutral expression does look a bit forced now. One, two, three quick pats. At the final one, he lingers. 

Their eyes lock and for a few seconds, nothing exists outside of the maze of Phil’s mind. Dan tries to figure it out, takes different directions to solve the mystery, but every time he thinks he has definitely found a clear path he hits a wall, blocked, because Phil is so many things at once that there seems to be no clear path to take when it comes to him. Dan wouldn’t mind getting lost in that maze for a while.

Phil’s hand slides off Dan’s shoulder and when the rest of the world comes back into view Dan realises that he is smiling. Phil smiles back.

“Alright then,” Phil says. “Be seeing you.”

In that moment Dan realises just how pink Phil’s lips are.

“See you,” Dan says, suddenly breathless.

Phil offers another smile that Dan doesn’t feel capable of returning. Instead, he notices how smooth Phil’s skin looks. He has a moment in which he has to remind himself that he isn’t allowed to touch it.

Phil doesn’t wait for a smile back. He turns around and walks away and Dan is rooted to the spot, oddly entranced by the view of Phil’s awkward gangly walk and his poor posture.

Dan misses the tube. Luckily, the next one arrives only five minutes later.

-

Dan is ninety nine percent certain that Dye and White are in the Shadow Realm.

They haven’t had that many clues. There was the note in their mailbox. There was the flower in the depths of the cave. There was the box of crystals, buried in Dye’s garden. Dan was particularly proud of that find, as it proved his tendency to check everything he can find in order to not miss anything does have its uses.

Every little clue has to do with different items belonging to Dye or White ending up in a space that the other one frequently occupies. Dan knows for certain what conclusions to draw from that. At the moment, he is just about ready to post his frankly excessive analysis on the forum. The only thing that makes Dan hesitate is the fact that it won’t be taken seriously. It is divisive, because the fandom is divided into two separate parts.

There are fans that believe that Dye and White are in a romantic relationship, and there are fans that don’t. Dan, Morgan, and Jamie are part of the former group of fans, but they don’t often talk about it publicly. Dan quite enjoys the secrecy of the relationship. It is nice to have to look below the surface level to find it. He just wishes it didn’t make people so angry. He wishes he could feel safe expressing his love for their relationship, and not worry that it might tarnish his reputation. He wishes he wouldn’t have to fear that his forum posts and server work would no longer be taken seriously if he spoke freely.

This post has ended up becoming incredibly thorough, and it points to only one conclusion. Dye and White have travelled to the Shadow Realm together, and when they return, their relationship might not be as hidden as it used to be. Dan can’t really imagine that - that Fall Whisperer would be confirmed as a queer game. That it would practically be advertised as including a gay couple, and that there are queer themes surrounding the Whisperers. In Dan’s opinion, it has always been obvious, even if it hasn’t been confirmed. The cover art of Fall Whisperer is of Dye and White, after all. It’s a slightly distorted image of them surrounded by crystals and flower petals, with a looming darkness in the background. Their shadows surround them both with a blue and green aura, respectively. It proves that the story is about the two of them, and the bond they share.

Seagull doesn’t answer many questions in a direct way when it comes to the story. He leaves room for speculation at every turn. It is no surprise that the fandom has become as prone to analyses and discussion as it has. While it isn’t a huge fandom, the amount of fan discussion and general activity on the forum makes it seem like one. Dan sometimes forgets that it is only a small corner of the internet that not everyone knows about. It certainly doesn’t feel that way when he posts discussions like these.

Now he is about to really, truly reveal the way he personally interprets the story for the first time. He had to talk about the rest of the game to drive home his points. A lot of it is used to prove the queerness of the story. Dan is known for being neutral, accessible to both parts of the fandom. Now he has to take a large step to one side of it.

It is nerve wracking.

But he needs something to do after a night of barely any sleep. After a morning of feeling groggy and weirdly horny and hungover even though he only had a couple beers last night. During a day that he has been dreading since Jimmy came back into his life. 

Because Lucy is expecting him for coffee.

Dan’s phone buzzes just as he thinks the thought. It must be Lucy. She must want him to come downstairs and have that difficult conversation.

It itsn’t. It is a text message from an unknown number.

_Hi! This is Phil. You know, the guy from last night? That followed you to the tube even though you could easily find the way yourself? Yeah, him. I might have asked Jimmy for your number. Anyway, I just wanted to know if you got home okay? If you didn’t you wouldn’t be able to answer, I guess._

When Dan finishes reading and comes back to himself, he realises that he’s biting down on his knuckles. He is smiling and blushing. He is holding back a nervous laugh.

Phil sounds just as much like _Phil_ through text as he does in real life. It makes Dan forget to worry about how awkward it must have been for Jimmy to have another guy ask for Dan’s number, even if it doesn’t mean what it sounds like it means.

_I got home okay, stalker. Lol. And what are you talking about? I couldn’t possibly have found my way without your help, obviously. How about you? Did PJ and Chris tear the place up while you were gone?_

Phil responds immediately.

_If by tearing the place up you mean they were snoring on the sofa like a middle aged couple, then yeah._

Another text follows.

_I’m glad you got home in one piece :)_

Dan finds himself biting his knuckles again.

Since when is that a habit of his? Dan pockets his phone and attempts to calm down a little bit. He shouldn’t indulge in something like that until after he talks to Lucy. Just as well as he shouldn’t read the stream PDF until after. Dan can’t really imagine an _after_ that conversation, so he has had to make one up to keep his sanity.

Dan looks at his monitor. He looks at the Fall Whisperer logo on the top of the web page. He looks at the threads lined up one after the other, all titled something along the lines of “dye and white theory”. 

Dan is going to come home to seeing how this post is received, too. He doesn’t look forward to that as much as he looks forward to the other stuff. He thinks he can already predict what people are going to say, and it won’t all be good. But some part of Dan, a part that has been growing more determined as of late, wants to be done with trying to do things that only feel ‘good’. Isn’t that why he is going to talk to Lucy, after all? Recently, the garden hasn’t done him any good. He takes a few tentative steps inside the cave, instead.

Dan scrolls to the bottom of the forum page and hits ‘post’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Ache With Me by Against Me!  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	21. Chapter 21

Coffee has never sounded as unappetising as it does when Lucy texts Dan for the third time, asking him to come downstairs for a chat like they agreed.

Lucy knows. She knows that Dan has spent the night with Jimmy when he saw just how hurt Lucy was after their break up. She looked Dan in the eyes and asked him if he’d known that Jimmy was gay, and Dan told her yes. Perhaps, she knew all along. Perhaps Dan’s attempt at covering things up after he first made the mistake of sleeping with Jimmy was all a ruse, entirely unnecessary because Lucy had already figured it out.

Dan can’t ever really know how well his poker face works on different people. To some, he can say anything and they’ll believe him. Others figure him out straight away even if they don’t say it out loud.

Regardless of when she found out, Dan has lied to her. Dan decided to act on his loneliness and desperation. He can’t blame it on not thinking clearly. He took Lucy into consideration before the first time and consciously decided to act selfishly.

Dan doesn’t want to be that person. He knows what it’s like to have his feelings disregarded in favour of someone else’s frivolous desires. He keeps telling himself that he won’t become that; he can’t become that. That it simply isn’t an option.

Regardless of what he thinks or identifies as, Dan is still the guy that fucked his best friend’s ex boyfriend immediately after they broke up.

Dan doesn’t need to knock. As he walks down the stairs he has no time to brace himself for the sight of Lucy standing in the doorway to her flat. She’s wearing her “hobo clothes”, which is a nickname she gives to the clothes she puts on when she’s at home. Today’s version of that is a black tank top and well-worn leggings.

“Are you coming?” Lucy asks, one eyebrow tentatively rising.

Dan’s mouth burns with stomach acid.

“Come here, boy,” she says, failing to stifle her smile. “Want a treat?”

Dan cracks up, hiding his smile behind a hand. He forgets everything else for a moment and sees only the person that he used to stay up with all night. The person that would make Dan’s stomach hurt from laughing.

Lucy can’t know the full extent of what has been going on between Dan and Jimmy if she is joking around like this. Dan’s laughter dies out as quickly as it came.

Dan dares to walk up to her, and she grins at him and asks him to wag his tail. He points his finger in her face and tells her to shut up. Because that’s what they’re like when they’re together.

“I’m not Checkers, mate,” Dan says as he closes the door behind himself and kicks off his shoes.

“You wish,” Lucy says. “Dog heaven’s never been so lucky.”

Dan hasn’t been to Lucy and Hayley’s flat in so long, entering it now feels like stepping back in time.

He used to spend a lot more time here, before Hayley moved in. Before Lucy broke up with Jimmy. Especially during the weekends when Jimmy was away, and him and Lucy could pretend to be kids at a sleepover except most of the time, all they did was complain about work and make some harsh but funny jokes about their coworkers.

There were nights when Jimmy was with them, too. They laughed just as hard then, but Dan ached inside when Lucy cosied up against Jimmy’s chest. The tension could have been cut with a knife when Jimmy locked eyes with him then. The silent exchange felt way too explicit for Lucy to be present for it, even if she couldn’t hear it.

Dan, to his surprise, still finds relief in here. Since Hayley moved in, most of the time the group hangs out at Will and Rob’s. Otherwise, it’s just Hayley and Lucy barging into Dan’s flat when he hasn’t been responding to text messages in too long.

It doesn’t work, though, when it’s the three of them. Dan and Hayley are too weird together and Lucy is too judgemental of that whole thing for it to really work.

Thankfully, Hayley isn’t home at the moment.

There are two lit candles on the coffee table and several blankets strewn across the large sofa, as well as some disorganised bills scattered over the table with two cups of coffee and a bag of crisps.

Dan feels something affectionate clench inside his heart. Lucy is so fucking weird.

Hayley must have been gone for a good few days if it has gotten to this messy state already. Dan doesn’t say a word about it as he sits down on the sofa and throws a blanket over his lap. Lucy copies his movements. How strange, that something so small can become a ritual that makes them both grin from ear to ear when they notice.

“So Haley’s back home?” Dan asks.

Lucy brings the blue, cauldron shaped mug to her lips and sips.

“Oi,” she says.

Dan can’t help the cheeky smile he throws her way. Lucy is well aware that she makes a big mess, and that Haley is the one that keeps things mostly in order when it comes to tidying, but she still sticks her tongue out at Dan like he’s being a rude guest for alluding to it. Dan sticks his tongue out at her in return. Maybe he is a rude guest.

“She’s at home, yeah,” Lucy says. “Something about her mum.”

Dan puts his mug back down on the coffee table. His phone burns in his jeans pocket, reminding him to at least send Haley a text and ask how things are going. Another part of him begs him not to. It is far too difficult to talk about the one thing they have most in common.

“Oh,” Dan says.

The playful air dies down. They sit in silence. When Lucy looks away for a moment, Dan takes the opportunity to really look at her. He doesn’t do that, really, ever. But she has black hair and snow white skin and round blue eyes like another person he knows. A person that texted Dan this morning to ask him if he got home okay, and admitted he got Dan’s number from Jimmy for the sole purpose of asking him that.

There is an ease to Lucy that Dan envies. She can live amongst her messes and still have the rest of her life in order. She doesn’t need to bend over backwards to please other people. She looks most beautiful when she’s drooling from laughter, and she isn’t scared to do that. When Dan is with her, acting like that feels like second nature. There’s an ease to her that reminds Dan of Phil.

“So,” Lucy says, looking straight at Dan because that’s what she does.

She faces things head on. Dan can do nothing but sit here and receive his judgement.

“So,” Dan repeats.

Lucy looks serious for a moment, twisting her hands in her lap.

“What was going on on Friday?” she asks.

Friday feels so long ago. Seeing Lucy and Jimmy together and how quickly it made Dan go into full panic mode feels like a different person. It doesn’t feel that way for long, when Dan fails to respond to Lucy’s question. Then, the panic that Dan has been pushing away with all of his might inches its way back into his consciousness. If nothing else at least it is familiar, to feel that fucked up.

“When did you and Jimmy start hanging out again?” Dan asks instead.

Lucy raises an eyebrow and her mouth tenses for a brief moment before it calms. She was about to ask ‘when did you’ and stopped herself. Because that is the reason for this discussion. She holds herself back. She doesn’t want to be cutting towards Dan, even when that is exactly what he deserves. Dan doesn’t get it.

He doesn’t feel comfortable with being treated so kindly.

“A few weeks ago, I think it must’ve been,” Lucy says. “We met in the lift for the first time after a year.”

Dan can’t fathom that Jimmy never told him this.

“It was… nice,” Lucy says. “It wasn’t the time or the place I expected to see him again, but I’m glad I did.”

Dan isn’t entirely sure if he is breathing right now.

“Please stop looking at me like that,” Lucy pleads.

“Like what?” Dan asks.

“Like I’m about to piss on your cat or something.”

Dan is nervous enough to laugh, but the sound is foreign to his own ears.

“I don’t have a cat,” Dan says.

“Alright, then I swear I won’t piss on your thing with Jimmy,” Lucy says.

Dan shuts up. Lucy sighs.

His thing with Jimmy. Dan forces himself to look at Lucy as she stalls. They can so easily slip into their roles around each other. They can so easily make immature jokes and laugh until they can’t breathe.

In this scenario, there are no roles. There is just Dan next to the person he hurt.

“I loved him,” Lucy says. “I still do.”

She tucks a black strand of hair behind her ear and looks into Dan’s eyes.

“You knew that, right?”

A year of guilt and shame and self loathing comes crashing down on Dan in that very moment.

All the secret keeping and repressing that made his body physically ache. All the avoiding, putting his friendships at risk in order to keep lying by omission rather than lying directly. Lucy doesn’t look angry. She looks tired.

“I did,” Dan admits.

He can’t stay in this building now. By hurting Lucy, he has ruined his friendship with Will and Rob by effect. What side would Haley choose? History would assume Dan, but unlike him, Haley has morals. Dan can’t expect her to look past those for his sake.

“And you did it anyway,” Lucy says.

Dan buries his face in his hands. He can’t focus on breathing if he has to think about how his face looks, or what Lucy might be thinking. But closing his eyes doesn’t take away everything else. It doesn’t take away just how much Dan keeps fucking up.

“Dan,” Lucy says in a gentle tone that Dan doesn’t deserve. “What’s going on?”

“I’m,” Dan breathes, “so fucking sorry.”

“Why?”

Dan composes himself. He can’t keep running away. But in the moment he longs for the garden. He longs for turning his back to everything that makes him feel too much. He longs for a week when he doesn’t have to spend several days simply trying to recoup after a panic attack.

But Lucy deserves an explanation. No matter how much this sucks, Lucy has a right to say what she needs to say and ask what she needs to ask.

“Why?” Dan repeats, dumbfounded. “I-- Jimmy and I--”

Lucy sighs, audibly.

“I know,” she says, frustration sharpening her tone. “Jimmy told me everything.”

Dan doesn’t know what _everything_ means right now. The physical part? The glances they exchanged before Jimmy and Lucy broke up? The love that Dan couldn’t return?

“He told me you slept with him as soon as he moved out,” Lucy says. “He told me you fucked off after, and then when you guys met on accident a year later it started all over again.”

It doesn’t sound like Dan. It sounds like another person. A person that never promised themselves that they wouldn’t hurt other people the way that they’ve been hurt themselves.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Dan says, uselessly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lucy asks. “Why didn’t you ask how I felt about it?”

Dan never thought of that as an option. He looks away, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, feeling it all well up inside of him.

“I don’t know,” Dan says, voice going tight. “I was fucking scared.”

Lucy waits. Dan looks back at her, trying his hardest to hold back the emotion from revealing itself on his face. There is no use. His eyes are wet with tears he struggles not to shed.

“I was scared of losing you,” Dan whispers.

“And what?” Lucy asks. “Keep seeing Jimmy in secret? It’s not like you’ve really even talked to me for the past month. You were already losing me, Dan. You were choosing Jimmy over me.”

_Fuck_ , Dan thinks.

“Fuck,” Dan says.

“Yeah,” Lucy agrees with a sad smile. “Fuck.”

The silence feels like choke hold for five excruciating seconds.

“I’m sorry,” Dan says. “I’m so fucking sorry. I wanted to… I wanted Jimmy, and I wanted you, and I fucked up.”

Lucy’s eyes are lined with tears, but she nods. She smiles. She shakes her head, and pats Dan’s knee.

“If you had just talked to me about it you wouldn’t have had to apologise for it now,” she says.

“I felt wrong for even thinking it,” Dan says.

Lucy’s hand remains on Dan’s knee. Dan tries his best to find comfort in the touch. Here he is, yet again, with a person he hurt that ends up comforting him.

“You weren’t wrong for _thinking_ it, Dan,” she says. “I love you both. I want you to be happy. If you two were happy together, I wouldn’t have tried to stop it. I’m not an asshole.”

Dan puts his hand over Lucy’s. She flinches, but Dan keeps his hand there, and she relaxes. Dan doesn’t think they have ever touched for this long before.

“I don’t know if we would have been happy together,” Dan says.

“No, Jimmy told me as much,” Lucy says.

“We ended things,” Dan says, because Lucy has to know. “I couldn’t keep doing it. I couldn’t--”

He couldn’t fall in love. He couldn’t attach. Dan won’t tell Lucy that, though.

“It didn’t feel right,” Dan says. “I did all of it for nothing.”

Lucy retrieves her hand and worries it in her lap.

“I guess it wasn’t for nothing,” she says. “I don’t think Jimmy and I would have reconnected if you hadn’t.”

“You shouldn’t have had to do it like that,” Dan sighs.

Lucy looks at him then, really looks at him. Dan tries to hide but he can’t tell if he is doing a good job of it.

“I forgive you, Dan,” she says. “You get that, right?”

“What?” Dan says.

“I wouldn’t be sitting here and talking to you about it if I didn’t,” Lucy says.

One tear rolls down Dan’s cheek. Lucy’s face is so full of sympathy for a second that Dan feels like he is about to go under.

“It hurt,” Lucy says. “And I forgive you.”

Dan catches his breath. Lucy puts her hand back on his knee.

“Don’t try to tell me you don’t deserve it,” she says. “Okay? I don’t want to discuss it. I just want to be friends again because I fucking missed you.”

Dan hates himself for crying, but the tears keep coming.

“I missed you, too,” he manages to say.

What more can he say?

What can he say or do that will undo Lucy’s hurt? Nothing. Dan isn’t used to getting the opportunity to do anything. He doesn’t think Jimmy is going to want to stay in his life, either. If he does something wrong it doesn’t end up in an accepted apology. That’s what makes him lie, Dan thinks. Mistakes haven’t been allowed for him before, so why would they be now?

“You better have,” Lucy says with a teasing glint in her eye.

Dan manages to smile. He rubs his face and dries his tears. He straightens his posture and takes a long, calming breath. Lucy looks at him throughout, but Dan finds he isn’t as scared of that now.

“I want to be friends, too,” Dan says quietly.

“So be my friend from now on,” Lucy says. “Talk to me about stuff. Don’t avoid me. I want to be your friend, even if it’s not all perfect. That’s what friendship is about, isn’t it?”

Dan nods silently.

Lucy pats his knee.

“Friendship is beating your ass at Mario Kart, too, though,” she says with a tentative smile. “Think you can handle that?”

Dan scoffs.

“You really think--,” he starts saying, and stops himself.

It’s so easy to slip into the role. To forget everything. To just push it all aside. Lucy shouldn’t have to push it all aside for his sake.

“It’s fine, Dan,” Lucy says. “I’m sick of thinking about that. Let’s just play video games, okay?”

Dan would be a fool not to take what Lucy is offering, even if he what he wants most is to lock himself in his flat and cry.

“Okay,” he says.

Lucy gets up from the sofa and gets the Nintendo Switch controllers. Dan sips the coffee. It’s luke warm, kind of disgusting, but at least he can swallow it down.

Today, there is an _after_ in Lucy finding out. There is, maybe, a point to actually communicating.

Lucy hands him a controller and grins at him.

“Prepare to get your ass beat,” she says as she sits down next to him.

“Never,” Dan says.

He dares to smile back. He dares to have fun playing. Dan isn’t used to something feeling good this soon after a conversation like that, but he wills himself not to question it right now. Right now, he wants to adopt Lucy’s way of handling things. To stay off all those sidetracks and head for the main road. To at least attempt to leave things in the past.

The cave might not be as scary as Dan thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: With A Little Help From My Friends - The Beatles  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	22. Chapter 22

**ripewhisperer** : Well done on the post. I might be crying a bit

It was ten o’clock in the evening and Dan came home to a surprisingly large response to his forum post. Beating Lucy at Mario Kart made him forget everything outside of it. He had a spring in his step when he walked upstairs to his flat. Some type of elation filled his chest, a relief that made the world look clearer and his smiles come faster.

He had assumed that coming home, he would have needed to escape. He had assumed that he would have had to pick up the pieces of himself after ruining another friendship. The attention online would have brought that to him. Now, the attention feels secondary. Dan runs a hand through his hair and stretches his back as he reads the DM conversation open on his monitor.

Jamie sends a few more messages before he responds. She tells him that he nailed every point, and that he would surely convince some people of the nature of Dye and White’s bond.

Dan feels it deep in his chest, but going to the forum to read the responses there is a different story. After a few comments telling him the same thing that Jamie did, one of them stirs the pot.

_Guys. Chrome is involved in the stream. He has insider info._

It makes his gut clench. The responses turn from simply praising his insight, to speculations on whether he has actually just leaked the entire arc of the post patch narrative.

The good feeling turns into dread. Dan trembles slightly going back to twitter, where the post is being shared among the fandom. No one is really asking him, though. Instead, he feels as though he has gained access to something he shouldn’t be seeing. Everyone is talking _about_ him, but no one is talking _to_ him. It makes him feel uncertain of whether he should address it himself. To stop the speculations, because they aren’t true.

Dan feels like an idiot.

He has insider information available to him that he has yet to look at. He did that for the sole purpose of avoiding this. He wanted to theorise on the clues as they are; clues, with nothing else to skew his perspective. Regardless of whether he tells people that now, he doubts that they will believe him.

There is another couple threads talking about something completely different. Something that Dan thinks is invasive and unprecedented and not at all relevant to any of this. They are discussing Dan’s sexual orientation.

Dan isn’t one of the creators. He is just another fan. His sexuality doesn’t have anything to do with the story, and yet, now some people are talking about him as if he is above them. 

He isn’t. Dan hasn’t been involved in the fandom on a casual discussion level for the past few weeks because of his real life, and no other reasons. These are theories pulled out of thin air.

**achromatic_bot** : i fucked up big time

He sends it to Jamie instead of responding to her praise. Dan can’t even take in the things she said about everything else. It doesn’t seem to matter at all, now. His post doesn’t matter. It only stirred things up. He has to calm things down before it gets loud enough to actually reach irregularsymbol, or TriangleNoses, or, worst of all, Seagull.

Dan is at a loss. Anything he tries to come up with makes him sound even more suspicious.

**ripewhisperer** : what do you mean?

**achromatic_bot** : have you been reading twitter?

**ripewhisperer** : I have. What about it?

**ripewhisperer** : I thought it was planned?

Dan chokes on his breath. Even Jamie is giving in to the growing delusion of the fandom. She doesn’t usually do that. She keeps a level head and views things objectively rather than basing her speculations on wishful thinking.

Dan is completely fucking done for. If the same thing has been repeated enough for even Jamie to think of it as fact, then there really is nothing Dan can say to undo it. It’s going to reach the creators whether he likes it or not. They are going to have to address it.

There is no future for Dan and the connection he developed with the creators anymore. He has barely dared to wish for something like that before now, but he did if only a little bit. Now he has no reason to even wish.

**achromatic_bot** : it wasn’t. i just wrote down my thoughts like i always do for things like this. idk wth people are on about.

**ripewhisperer** : honest?

**ripewhisperer** : You can be real with me, Chrome. I won’t tell.

Dan sighs, frustrated.

**achromatic_bot** : i’m being completely real you have to believe me

**ripewhisperer** : alright… shit.

Dan’s gut clenches harder. He closes out of his and Jamie’s conversation and tries to level out his breathing but the breaths get shorter the more he tries to elongate them.

If he can’t change the discussion on a big scale, he has to at least make sure the creators know he hadn’t meant to create a discussion.

At first, he opens his and irregularsymbol’s DMs. It isn’t really about her, though, is it? She didn’t write the story. It doesn’t affect her as much as it affects Seagull.

Dan opens his and Seagull’s DMs quickly, typing out an explanation before he changes his mind.

**achromatic_bot** : idk if you’ve seen the talks in the fandom but if you have i have to tell you i didn’t mean for that to happen. i post my analyses about stuff like this all the time. i didn’t realise they don’t know i know as little as them about the stream on friday

He sends it off before reading through it. Seagull needs to know as soon as possible, regardless of how clumsily it is worded. Dan is about to prepare himself for the agonising wait for a response when three dots appear on his screen in an instant, indicating that Seagull is already replying.

That means it is serious. Seagull is already on twitter, probably freaking the fuck out about all of this as badly as Dan is. Probably worse. Dan doesn’t know what is going to happen with the game after Friday, but if any of his theories are true and people think he has insider information, anything Seagull planned has been for nothing.

Dan is an overthinker. He turns every possible outcome over in his head until his brain is fried. How the fuck has he not overthought this? His thoughts about the post were only about the content, and how badly the people that don’t believe in Dye and White’s relationship would try to disprove his theories.

**Seagull** : It’s fine. You got enough of it wrong not to warrant any sort of crisis.

Dan stares.

**Seagull** : I take it you’ve read the PDF?

**achromatic_bot** : i haven’t. i wanted to save it until after i posted my theory. It’s not a theory otherwise

**Seagull** : Really? That’s impressive.

**achromatic_bot** : how come?

**Seagull** : You got enough of it right that I thought you must have

Dan’s heart lodges tight in his throat. The strange mixture of pride and a panic that he doesn’t know what to do with makes his body shake. The panic should be gone, since Seagull is alright with it all. Dan still can’t push that panic away, though. 

**achromatic_bot** : i’m so sorry. i didn’t mean to do this. i wouldn’t ever do something like this if i wasn’t an idiot

**Seagull** : You’re clearly not an idiot. I don’t think I’ve seen any other posts that get as close as yours do.

Dan feels like he is going to throw up. He doesn’t know if he feels happy or scared. Seagull has read some of his posts. He is basically confirming what Dan has held on to for the past few years. Everyone thinks they have the story right. Everyone projects their own thoughts and feelings onto it. And they can, because the game is open for interpretation. Anyone can put themselves into it and take what they need out of it. That’s why it resonates so deeply with so many people.

Dan is no different. He has always thought that he has the story right. He almost felt uncomfortable with how distinctly it seemed to mirror his own life, and the challenges he faces.

_I don’t think I’ve seen any other posts that get as close as yours do._

**achromatic_bot** : … really?

**Seagull** : Why did you think I wanted you to know everything first?

**achromatic_bot** : it’s part of the other stuff, right? with the times and the codes about the stream?

**Seagull** : I could have removed that though

**achromatic_bot** : oh

Of course he could have.

Dan feels like he missed out on so many thoughts, so many assumptions. He was so convinced that he was simply needed for the stream and the server that anything outside of it was off the table. Dan usually entertains every outcome.

**Seagull** : I’m not going to respond to anyone about your post, btw. I think it’s best if you don’t, either. Let it play out. People are going to come up with a lot of stuff before the stream and this will probably go away soon enough.

**achromatic_bot** : okay i won’t

Dan has the perfect opportunity to thank him. He has the perfect opportunity to let Seagull know that the game changed his life.

**Seagull** : Don’t worry about it though. I hope you won’t, you really don’t need to.

**achromatic_bot** : yeah it’s fine, i just had to make sure i hadn’t ruined any of your plans etc

**Seagull** : Symbol put the fear of God into you did she? LOL

Dan laughs.

**achromatic_bot** : i hate spoilers so no matter what she said i would have tried to avoid it

**Seagull** : Everything has to go according to plan. Make sure to read the PDF. Stick to the plan ;)

**achromatic_bot** : that’s part of the plan is it?

**Seagull** : Of course it is. I don’t do a lot of things on accident. I think I distinctly remember you saying that in your post?

Dan is going to implode. He really did read it. Not only that, Seagull considers Dan a part of his plan. That simply can’t be real.

**achromatic_bot** : you got me there haha

He has every opportunity not to end the conversation. He has every opportunity to tell Seagull everything he has always wanted to tell him.

Dan closes out of the conversation.

-

Dan used to dislike White.

He looked like an antagonist to him. In the garden, with Dye, any progress they made was stumped by the moments that White showed up and started to rave about his time in the caves. He would poke fun at the plants that Dan’s character and Dye so meticulously tended to, in order to stifle the shadow’s voices. It was difficult to keep the flowers and plants alive for long. They were effective in preventing communication, but at the same time the garden seemed to lead the shadows in. Though they could not make themselves heard, Dye was certain that the short life span of the garden had to do with the shadows. They were so adamant on communicating that they pulled out any means to keep doing so.

Many of Dan’s quests at the start had to do with exploring the forests and fields surrounding the garden in search of seeds. The world seemed endless. The forest was lush with green and the music was calming. Dan enjoyed those quests. The shadows weren’t completely silent, but there were no screams. He could take his time exploring the woods, and so he did. He walked and walked until one day, he reached a clearing. A sign of civilisation.

An abandoned railroad, surrounded by nearly broken pavement. No one seemed to have visited this place in a long, long time.

On the far end of the rail, Dan found an abandoned locomotive. Curiosity overtook him as he walked towards it and opened the door to the driver’s car. The shadows were completely silent, as if holding their breaths.

The inside was nothing like Dan had imagined. It was tidied up and neat, with stacks of arrows shelved up on the wall opposite the entrance. There were pillows and blankets in a small corner and two pairs of black boots were placed beside the door. This had clearly been made into a home.

After checking every single item without anything other than a ‘???’ as explanation, Dan decided to leave. Just as he was about to, White came inside. He didn’t look bothered with Dan’s presence. He rather looked like he had been expecting him.

“I’ve been trying to get it to work for ages,” he said. “No luck so far.”

It made Dan wonder where exactly White would like to go if the locomotive actually worked. 

He didn’t get to ask that, though. He got the option to ask why White was living here and decided on it.

“There aren’t many other options around here,” White answered. “You’d sooner see me dead than catch me sleeping in Dye’s cabin, thank you very much.”

Dan chose to ask why.

“He ignores the shadows. He thinks that that solves it.”

White was silent for a moment.

“Has he told you about the other side of it yet?” he asked. “What happens when you keep them at bay for long enough?”

Dan got no option to answer. White grinned.

“You’ll find out eventually,” White said. “You won’t like it, but you’ll find out.”

White sat down in his little nook of blankets and pillows.

“Dye thinks it’s worth it. He says so, anyway. I only had to experience it once to know I couldn’t stand it.”

A melancholy melody started to play. White’s smile was wiped off his face. In the dialogue box, his portrait showed a tired expression.

“I feel bad for him,” he said. “I hope he won’t put up with it much longer.”

“Why do you care?” Dan chose to ask. “You make fun of him, but you still utilise his plants for your arrows. You’re basically using him at this point.”

White’s portrait frowned deeply. It’s his usual expression, but now it looked even graver.

“If there’s anyone using him here it’s you,” White said. “You don’t even know him.”

The resentment was obvious. Dye and White frequently spoke about one another in this way. Like they were tied to one another against their will, but if it was brought up they both denied it. So were any assumptions in the opposite direction.

Dan couldn’t completely figure out what made them both so protective of one another, when they seemed to stick together out of duty. But then, Dan’s impression of White was that of a person that desperately sought hero status. He intentionally disregarded the help Dye provided him with, despite the fact that he disagreed with his methods. He seemed almost happy about Dan’s character’s presence, but not because he was another person like them, capable of helping out. No any relief White felt about Dan’s sticking around appeared to be because White liked to be outnumbered. He liked to push back against the machine, even though that was absolutely not what Dye and Dan’s character were. White seemed to enjoy working against people. Was that what made him keep Dye in his life? To work against someone?

Dan got to choose between leaving and staying.

Even though White was off putting in many ways, Dan decided to stay. Even though he didn’t know if the shadows would creep closer, or if it was safe. He was curious to know what this character’s actual motivations were. In his locomotive, he looked far less intimidating than he did in the garden, hands dirty after hours of exploring the cave, chest puffed out, declaring himself so high above everyone else.

In here, he just looked alone.

Nothing terrible happened during that night. They slept side by side and the music did not turn ominous like it so often did when Dan slept at Dye’s cabin. Instead it remained soothing. The shadows sounded like mere whispers. 

Next to White, the story changed directions. The depths of it started to unveil itself. Dan realised that he might have gotten it all wrong. Perhaps Dye was the one that perpetuated the shadows increasing panic and not White. Perhaps White was right. Was he the hero that would make everything right?

The morning after, Dan followed White into the caves for the first time.

-

Dan thinks of White when he picks up the phone to talk to Jimmy. He thinks of Lucy, and the conversation they had only yesterday. The fog hasn’t lifted and Dan still struggles to let himself feel, but there is another part that doesn’t weigh on him as heavily now that he is on the other side of his conversation with Lucy.

The expected exasperation and resentment doesn’t come when Jimmy answers the phone. Instead, he listens to what Dan has to say and he tells him things in return. They talk about Lucy, and they talk about the relationship they didn’t have, and they talk about Saturday night and how weird it had felt.

Dan discovers that the people around him, here, aren’t much like the ones that he used to know. When he talks candidly, he gets that candidness back. He might not expand on everything as much as he could. There is still a lot he needs to keep to himself. But he wants to have friends. So far, Lucy’s philosophy seems to ring true. In order to have friends, you need to be a friend. Dan hasn’t been much of anything for a long time.

But he could be Lucy’s friend. He could be Jimmy’s friend. Dan could wipe away the distance he kept out of fear of falling in love and accept that no person is any one thing. Jimmy doesn’t have to remain a dark figure in his past that stays inside his head in order to torture him endlessly and prove that Dan is a bad person.

When Dan ends the call, his heart is still in his throat. He still trembles.

He is going into unexplored territory next to people he used to think wouldn’t accept him. He still isn’t certain that they will. Lucy and Jimmy are sympathetic but they don’t know everything. On the other hand, they have accepted some of the bad. They have given Dan a second chance.

Dan would be a fool to not at least peek inside the cave with them, and explore what life may be like when you finally let people in after what had seemed like the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Waterfall by The Stone Roses  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	23. Chapter 23

The waiting room is different from this point of view.

Dan has become used to being the person on the other side of the receptionist window. It’s just a day-to-day. A means to an end. You sign in all kinds of people with all kinds of problems, and eventually they stop being people with individual problems and become a mass, indistinguishable from one another.

He only had to step inside the building for the discomfort to set in. He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to need to be here.

Dan looks down at his phone the moment the clock strikes ten. They are never on schedule. For an undetermined amount of time, Dan will have to sit in the discomfort and in the desire for the next few moments of his life to be over as quickly as possible.

He only has to wait for two minutes until a young man enters the waiting room and calls Dan’s name. He’s got short black hair and a beard and deep set eyes. He can’t be much older than Dan.

Dan gets up from his seat and forgets how to smile so he simply grimaces, feeling his numb lips begin to twitch as he greets the doctor. The doctor smiles back. Dan doesn’t have to look for a long time to notice that those deep brown eyes are kind. Sometimes, Dan hates that compassion. Sometimes, it only makes him feel like his issues are juvenile.

Entering the office feels like entering a different world. Dan has forgotten how it feels to be in this position after not seeing Susanne in so long. He takes on a different role in here. He doesn’t get the option to at the very least pretend to be a normal person. This doctor has read what other doctor’s have written down. Described in medical terms, it all sounds so cold. 

Depression and anxiety to the point of disability that may or may not be temporary.

Descriptions of Dan’s mannerisms like they are a way to determine his emotional state.

It sounds cold, and so Dan becomes cold. He completely sheds his personality and becomes only a shell, barely capable of containing the slew of problems inside, sitting opposite some poor individual that is supposed to try and set it all right.

“How have you been doing since you saw a doctor last?”

If there is one question Dan can’t ever figure out how to answer, it’s that. The last few months become a black void. All the good and all the bad disappears and for once, only the present exists. That is a method Susanne definitely hasn’t mentioned among her suggestions on how to reach a mindful state; stepping into a doctor’s office and forgetting everything about yourself, forcing you to take in the moment.

Maybe it would be easier if he had the same doctor every time, but that is not a privilege that Dan has been granted. Everyone is understaffed and busy. Dan wonders briefly if he would be further along his recovery had that not been the case.

“I’ve had my ups and downs,” Dan ends up saying.

“Have you been depressed?” the doctor asks.

“Yes,” Dan says. 

For a moment, he wonders if he has actually been depressed or if he is exaggerating.

“How is the medication going for you?” the doctor asks. “You’ve been taking it for how long?”

“I started this one a little more than a year ago,” Dan says.

“So it should be in full effect by now,” the doctor says. “You don’t take the full dose, though. That would explain the depression.”

Dan hates this. He really fucking hates this.

He is like a child being reprimanded by a teacher. This guy is Dan’s age, for fuck sake. That can’t be fair. If Dan still felt able to compare his life and where it has ended up so far, he would. He isn’t sure if he is grateful for that fact, seeing as it is a product of becoming so alienated from people that don’t have issues like him rather than personal insight.

“You stopped seeing your therapist,” the doctor comments. “How come?”

“I felt like I needed a break,” Dan says. “I reckon I’ll take up contact with her again soon enough.”

It’s all so stale.

“How are the effects of the medicine? Any side effects?”

Dan has no idea. Who is he, off the meds? Who is he, on the meds? Does it alter his emotional state to the point of a personality change? Are any changes due to personal growth, or an effect of the substances he takes every day in order to not want to die so badly that he actually tries to?

The response Dan chooses is always just enough of what the doctors want to hear. He is doing okay with the meds. Yes, he wants to keep taking them for a bit longer. No, he doesn’t want a larger dose and see if that takes away the depressive symptoms he still experiences at this dosage.

The office, Dan realises, doesn’t look too different from his flat. Grayscale monochrome, tidy and impersonal.

Dan’s dad might have been right when he said that it looks detached.

“And your mum?” the doctor asks. “How is she doing?”

Dan’s jaw clenches hard. He knew the question was coming but he can’t ever brace himself for it.

“She’s doing okay,” he says.

He has no clue if his mum is doing okay. He hates that he has to see a person he has never met before and be asked about something he doesn’t talk about even with his closest friends. It may be relevant, but Dan doesn’t give a fuck right now. He wants to pretend that that part of his life is over for a bit longer. 

He just doesn’t want to be here.

The doctor hands him two assessment papers. Dan has filled them out plenty of times before, and every time he wonders how the hell you assess depression and anxiety inside a stale, cold office that makes you forget that you have a life outside of it. He can’t figure out how to know if his symptoms have been going on for over two weeks. Does one good day in the midst of ten bad days start the cycle over? Time doesn’t mean the same thing to Dan now as it used to. Ever since he first became ill it has strayed further from a linear path and leaned harder into a squiggly mess with no beginning, no middle, and no end.

In here, Dan wants to die. In here, his anxiety is off the charts.

His results indicate severe anxiety and moderate depression.

The doctor tells him that he can always call if there are any issues with his mental state or prescription. He still thinks that Dan should consider upping the dose of his antidepressants. He encourages Dan to take up contact with his therapist again. Dan shakes the doctor’s hand and says goodbye, leaving yet another person with an access to the intimate details of his life, without the promise of ever meeting them again.

-

Dan is not used to being on public transport at this time of day.

He isn’t used to being outside his flat at this time of day, period. London doesn’t look as scary beneath the September sun. The shadows aren’t as dark. The cobblestone doesn’t feel tilted beneath Dan’s feet. He finds himself rolling his shoulders back, and slowing his step in order to savour the feeling of warmth on his skin for the time it takes to reach the station.

Dan doesn’t usually travel this far from home. His life is contained within a small circle in London, and that makes it seem less daunting. It reaches to his work, which is only a fairly short ride on the tube from Dan’s home. The idea of that used to provide some comfort. When life got too large to handle, Dan reminded himself that he only had to exist within that small space. As long as he sorted out everything that it contained, everything would work itself out.

Now, everything is sorted out. For the time being, Dan has finally let go of some of the anxiety that Jimmy brought to his life. He is on better terms with Lucy again. In not too long, he will read the PDF file that irregularsymbol sent to him and finally let himself step inside that world and pretend that his life exists inside that grand fictional space rather than on the tube ride to and from work.

Dan’s life will go back to normal. He will prioritise his schedule. He will come back to the server full time, and limit most of his social interactions to the ones he has with his online friends. He will meet his real life friends once or twice a week. He is going back into what his schedule was supposed to provide for him; comfort. Recently, he has had to stray so far from it that everything became messy. Maybe he will even feel capable of managing his depression again, like he did for a little while. The squiggly timeline in Dan’s mind doesn’t offer an answer to when that was, but Dan knows he felt capable of managing it for a stretch of time. Didn’t he?

Eleven o’clock looks good in London. As Dan stands beside the tube station, waiting just a little longer before he walks downstairs, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and snaps a discreet picture. The image shows cobblestone and old buildings and a light grey sky with slivers of blue slipping through. The sun looks better in real life. Dan snaps another picture to get it right, but just as he slides the brightness down on the photo app in order to really capture what is before him, something touches his arm and stays.

Dan’s muscles tense up so hard and so quickly that he feels dizzy as he jerks away from the touch.

“Oh, sorry. I scared you, didn’t I?”

When Dan looks back he expects Phil to laugh at him, but instead he looks rather serious. He looks apologetic. Dan isn’t sure what he would have preferred. He hates to imagine that Phil thinks of him as a frail thing, something to closely tend to in order to not cause a stir. Some scared little boy with no sense of humour.

Phil really hasn’t seen much of Dan besides a row of vulnerable moments, outside the clinic.

“Yes,” Dan says, dramatically putting a hand on his chest as he releases an exaggerated breath. “You scared me.”

That lures a smile out of Phil. His pale skin still looks vibrant and alive. Beneath the blinding September sun, and the cold flicker inside the clinic, and the warm glow inside his flat, and the colourful traffic lights next to the London Underground. But his eyes are if possible even brighter. Open and clear and hazardous. Dan has to remind himself not to stare into them for too long.

“Let me feel,” Phil grins.

Dan doesn’t understand what he meant until Phil slides his hand under Dan’s palm on top of his chest. If there were no palpitations before, there definitely are now. Dan feels Phil’s hand through the layer of his black jumper, like he is reaching right inside of Dan’s chest and grabbing a shard of Dan’s lonely, misshapen heart to keep for himself.

Dan forgets not to stare into Phil’s eyes just as he remembers that he doesn’t actually have to keep his hand above Phil’s on his chest.

Phil smiles and this one is real. This one is asking to be looked at.

“Your heart is racing,” Phil says.

There are strings of yellow surrounding Phil’s irises.

“You scared me,” Dan says.

Phil ducks his head sheepishly and pulls his hand back.

“I’m sorry.”

Dan shakes his head with a laugh and looks away. He doesn’t need to remember the details of Phil’s colourful eyes.

“It’s fine,” he says. “It’s not like it was a robber or a murderer trying to grab me.”

“How do you know?” Phil asks.

Dan looks back at all of Phil’s lively contrasts and smiles.

“I guess I don’t,” Dan says with a shrug, “but I accept the risk.”

Phil lets out a short laugh, a high and joyful sound. His hands twitch at his sides.

“I think you’re safe,” Phil says. “I’m not planning on robbing or murdering you.”

Dan giggles, cheeks blooming with warmth.

“Gee, thanks” he jokes.

Phil pushes his hand down the front pockets of his skinny jeans and tilts his head to the side. The sun is glaring him right in the face but Phil doesn’t squint. His eyes remain as open as ever, flicking across Dan’s face with their usual urgency.

“So where are you headed?” Phil asks, gesturing towards the screen next to the stairs.

“Home,” Dan says. “I just had an appointment.”

Phil seems to consider this for a moment before he looks back at Dan’s face.

“Any other plans?”

_I’m going to read a very important PDF file that I’ve been looking forward to reading for the better part of a week now_ , Dan thinks.

“No,” Dan says. “What about you?”

Phil’s smile asks to be looked at.

“I’m just going to grab lunch,” Phil says. “Would you like to join me?”

_I’m not supposed to step out of bounds_ , Dan thinks. _I need to keep my life small._

“Sure,” Dan says. “Where to?”

Phil nods ahead, towards a building with a row of shops at the bottom. The one in the middle catches Dan’s eyes, with its familiar green letters and logo.

“Starbucks,” Dan says.

“Unless you want to go somewhere else?” Phil asks.

Dan starts walking and Phil falls into step with him.

“Never,” Dan says. “I love Starbucks.”

As they walk towards the coffee shop, Dan’s eyes land on a yellow leaf, dancing through the air. It is the first one he has seen this year. Caught in the wind, it goes higher, to the backdrop of the sliver of blue in the white sky. As Dan stops outside of the coffee shop, he turns to look at Phil and finds that he prefers that combination of colours when they appear in Phil’s eyes.

-

They end up on opposite sides of a small round table. Dan got a scone because he can’t actually afford this. Phil got a sandwich, and managed to persuade Dan to try out the Caramel Macchiato instead of the black he usually gets. As Phil takes a sip out of the large white mug, Dan realises that this is the first time they are spending proper time alone. It’s much more than the time it takes to walk from Phil’s place to the station, or the time it takes for Phil to check in at the clinic.

Dan looks outside the window. A rush of nerves wreaks havoc in his gut.

“Go on, try it,” Phil says.

His voice is so gentle. Dan looks back at him, once again forgetting how to emote.

Phil meets his blank expression with an encouraging smile.

“Honest, if you somehow hate it I promise I’ll buy you that gross black coffee,” he says.

“It’s not gross,” Dan says, a twitch to his brow.

“Don’t lie,” Phil laughs. “Isn’t that one of the seven deadly sins?”

“You’re thinking of the ten commandments, mate.”

“Somebody took Sunday School seriously.”

Phil raises a suspicious eyebrow and Dan doesn’t have to remember how to smile before he does.

“If colouring in pictures of Jesus means you’re taking your religion seriously then sure,” Dan says.

“Well, point is, lying makes you go to hell,” Phil shoots back. “Drink up.”

Dan snorts a laugh so loud he catches a few other customers staring back at them. Phil’s urgent eyes flick around for a moment until they settle comfortably by looking at Dan’s face, crinkling in the corners as Phil smiles.

“I’ve already got a reserved seat,” Dan says. “I can’t wait.”

Dan grins to himself and brings the cup to his lips. He studies the fading smile on Phil’s face and promises himself to remember that Phil can joke about religion but not about death.

The sugary drink is like an orgasm in Dan’s mouth. Dan’s eyebrows shoot up on his forehead and closes his eyes as he makes a noise that he can’t hold back.

When he opens his eyes Phil’s ivory skin has turned beet red.

“You really liked it, huh?” he asks, the shade of his face betraying the attempted calm of his voice.

“ _Love_ ,” Dan corrects him. “I want to marry it.”

He takes another sip. This time he keeps his eyes open. Phil’s adam’s apple bobs as he swallows and Dan lets himself enjoy the moment before he reminds himself to reign it back. He is already stepping too far from his small life by doing this spontaneous thing. He can’t suddenly sprint from it just because Phil is nice to flirt with.

“What’re you doing on this side of town, then?” Dan asks as he sets the cup back down on the table. “Work?”

Phil nods distantly.

“Yeah,” he says.

Maybe Phil isn’t easy to flirt with. If this is his reaction, perhaps they haven’t been flirting at all.

“What do you do?” Dan asks.

Phil’s posture changes when Dan asks. He keeps looking at Dan’s face but a barrier is brought up, hiding that intriguing genuinity. Apparently Phil also dislikes talking about work.

“I’m a writer,” Phil says. “I work with a couple friends at an office near here. We’ve got a project together.”

Suddenly, Phil feels less relatable. Like the doctor, he becomes another person Dan’s age that has their life more together than he does.

It could be that, or the wall Phil put up that only appears to get thicker the longer they stay on this topic.

“That sounds really interesting,” Dan says.

Phil nods and fake smiles.

“It is,” he says, and that does sound true. “PJ’s part of it. It’s kind of a secret project so far, though, so we sort of keep it under wraps. I hope you don’t mind.”

Dan doesn’t like the weird atmosphere the topic has created. It is so opposite the thing that Dan is attracted to about him. In a sense, it might be better for Dan to stay away from the non-performative, easy back and forth they usually have. But it isn’t as fun.

So Dan leans forward with a serious expression on his face. He waves Phil closer. Phil looks confused but leans forward as well. Even among all the deep scents of the coffee shop, Phil’s citrus and honey breaks through.

Dan clears his throat and watches the nervous twitch of Phil’s lips.

“So you _are_ a robber slash murderer?” Dan whispers conspicuously.

Phil doesn’t have time to hide before he splutters a hearty laughs. The sound reaches inside Dan’s chest and steals another shard. The strange distance is closed once again and Dan decides to enjoy it before he has to retreat to his small life.

For the remainder of lunch, Dan steers clear of subjects Phil dislike. They don’t get to chat for long before Phil has to go back to work, but they have time for a couple more laughs and a couple more lingering looks. It’s non performative, and so natural, and so easy, but Dan still feels like he is playing pretend. He isn’t allowed this.

They say goodbye with a small hug, but it grows larger as it stays on Dan’s mind throughout his tube ride home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Stretch Out And Wait by The Smiths  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	24. Chapter 24

**| FALL WHISPERER STREAM 09/06/2019 |**

_ > Muted public chat _   
_ > Scavenger hunt _   
_ > achromatic_bot clues? _   
_ > g&c announcement _

There are several long paragraphs of text detailing certain aspects of the stream. Dan mostly skims through it. He knows some of it already. At twelve am, the explanation for the scavenger hunt will be posted on the forum, on twitter, and on the Fall Whisperer website. Three separate servers will be opened to the public, all coded for max capacity of guests. The players will be looking for a treasure. There are going to be different clues scattered around the map, most of which are placed in the same places that the clues were placed after the patch. The players won’t know that part, though.

The creators and Dan are going to move through the different servers to chat with players at certain points. If the treasure isn’t found in too long, they will post some of the clues in the chat that everyone on the server is going to see but won’t be able to participate in.

Dan doesn’t have to search for clues in the servers. He only has to scroll a bit further down this document to find the treasure.

It is a rectangular object, half green and half purple. The sprite version doesn’t look like much, but as Dan scrolls further down he finds another image.

The background is a gradient of green and purple, meeting and melding in the middle. It is an abstract image of sky and ground. The green isn’t very detailed, but the purple sky is littered with little white pixelated dots that must be stars. At the foreground of the picture, there is the colourful tree from the image that Triangle posted only a few weeks ago. Next to it, Dye and White are standing like dark shadows. Dye’s silhouette is dark green and White’s silhouette is dark purple. They aren’t touching, but their hands are close enough that they might as well be. The tree’s roots reach all the way down to the bottom of the page.

At the very top, there is a row of letters in the same font as the original Fall Whisperer cover. It says ‘ _Caves and Gardens_.

Beneath the image, a paragraph explains that this is the Fall Whisperer prequel, coming in 2020. Out of all things, Dan didn’t expect this. He never dared to dream of it.

_Choose to play as Dye or White in the ultimate quest to find their other half._

It isn’t the first time they have been described as two parts of one whole, but it still seems significant.

_Two separate storylines for the price of one game! What really happened before they met outside the cave? What was it, really, that compromised White’s physical well being? What was Dye doing there on that specific day, at that specific time? What made him decide to heal White?_

These are unanswered questions that have been discussed on the forums since Fall Whisperer was released. They are questions that Dan never expected would be answered. He scrolls down to the next page. There is a single line, finalising the explanation of the prequel. Dan holds his breath.

_What caused them to fall in love?_

Dan slaps a hand over his mouth and simply stares at the line in disbelief. His heart is beating hard and his body is practically vibrating. He feels like laughing and he feels like crying and he feels a bit ridiculous but he can’t be bothered to care. He rolls the desk chair back and spins around as he drowns in the feelings fighting for dominance in his chest.

He lands on pride. He fucking knew it.

“I fucking knew it,” Dan says in disbelief, to no one, as he looks at the screen from a distance.

He rolls forward again and scrolls up the document. He saves the two images and ends up staring at the second one; what must be the game cover. Caves and Gardens.

Dan can’t believe it. Seagull never explicitly stated that a prequel or sequel was an impossibility, but it seemed like it anyway. He remembers arguing against the idea time and time again. They never had any proof of the opposite, though. The people that were arguing for a sequel simply did so out of wishful thinking. Dan hadn’t even dared to wish.

The document doesn’t stop there. There is a possibility to find Dye and White in each server during the stream. It doesn’t state where. Seagull left that detail out, unavailable to Dan’s view, for some reason. Maybe he wants Dan to participate.

When you find them both, they will lead you to the treasure. They won’t have any dialogue. They will simply walk and if anyone else happens to be around, they can follow them too. It doesn’t say where Dye and White went after the patch. It just says that they reappear, which Dan still takes to mean that they were spending time in the Shadow Realm. Inside the alternate timeline.

Dan had thought that the Shadow Realm would become available for the open world, post storyline. It should be, because of the game’s message. He can’t find anything that says that that will happen, though. It’s all prequel. All Caves and Gardens. All love story. Available to play from either character’s perspective. All the questions will be answered.

For a moment, Dan feels immense affection for Seagull.

He is really breaking the norm and doing the LGBT community a major service within gaming spaces by releasing this game. How did he get money for it? It can’t have been easy to get that idea approved. He must have really had to fight for it to make it happen. He must have wanted it to happen that badly. It must mean that much to him.

Dan already knows that people are going to argue that Seagull is only doing it because of the queer fanbase that the original game has and continues to amass. He can already imagine the people that are going to stop playing and complain about how the game is ruined now, because the game developers and writers decided to “sell out”. Because why else would they confirm the gay relationship and create an entire story around it through an extremely ambitious second title? They couldn’t possibly want to do it for any other reasons than to be talked about, to be paid. That is exactly the type of impression the creators have made on some of the players, apparently.

It is such complete and utter bullshit. Dan sometimes wonders what it is like to play the game from such a bigoted perspective. He is glad that he doesn’t know, and never will know. He is glad that now, after the announcement, the people that are against Dye and White’s relationship will have to either accept it or go away. 

It isn’t only that, though. The characters mean everything to Dan, but he feels almost equally happy about the fact that it basically confirms that Seagull is queer. Dan would of course be fine if that isn’t the case, but he can’t imagine a world in which Seagull isn’t, either. Especially not now. And that matters a whole lot.

Dan isn’t loud and proud. He has never gone to pride. He has never come out to anyone. He has never labelled his sexuality, at least not to other people. Based on his actions, people in his life have come to conclusions that Dan has yet to confirm or deny, and he prefers it that way. All he wants to do is what feels most natural to him. If that happens to include sharing a bed with a man, so be it. It doesn’t have to be called anything.

It feels important, now. In a moment that flashes by, Dan feels an intense urge to just be _gay_.

The following moment provides him with a churning pain in his gut as he remembers exactly why he never wanted to before. It isn’t just about keeping his options open or to make a statement by not making one. He is scared.

Right now, Dan feels a little less scared. He frankly feels less scared than he has since he figured out his attraction to men.

**achromatic_bot** : i just read the pdf

Dan’s fingers hover over his keyboard. What does he say?

He can’t assume things. He can’t tell him everything. As much as he imagined he would like to, it doesn’t work like that in real life. Seagull is still a real person. A stranger. Dan is only a consumer to him, at the end of the day. If he knew about everything that Dan has gained from his story it would make things weird. Not that Dan can imagine a world in which him and Seagull are peers, but he still wants to maintain some level of dignity. They trusted him to read this and help out with the stream _because_ of the fact that he doesn’t act like other fans.

**achromatic_bot** : i love the idea. i am so excited to play the next game. see you on the stream on Friday!! :)

It sounds nothing like the swirl of thoughts in his head. There is nothing close to the plain gratitude he feels, knowing that Dye and White’s story will finally be widely known as a love story. Dan did always enjoy the fact that it wasn’t stated, but now that he knows that it will be, he feels proud. The speculations and clues have run their course. It feels like the absolute correct time to make a statement. Dan might not be able to make such a statement himself, but he already feels a bit less restrained. He might not be able to tell Seagull that, but that is fine. 

What he shares with this story is personal. It is his. He imagines that Seagull feels the same way.

There must be a reason to why he leaves everything up for interpretation, after all.

-

It follows Dan around for the entirety of Wednesday. His body feels light in a way that it hasn’t in a long time. He walks the streets of London with a newfound ease and flies through his work day. He answers phone calls and checks in patients and even manages a conversation with a colleague, but for the entire duration of it, Dan’s mind is elsewhere.

He finds himself imagining just what the next title will include. He wonders whether his own speculations are correct. He wonders if the narrative that the Dye and White fans have practically agreed on to be canon is actually, or if they got everything wrong. Dan won’t be upset if they are wrong, he is simply happy to know that they will have an actual narrative to stick to, now.

It settles some of the fears he has had about how long the Fall Whisperer fandom will be around. Dan can’t imagine a time when there won’t be at least a few players left on the servers, or new people discovering the game, but Caves and Gardens has not only assured the fact that the fandom will last, but it promises that it will expand, too.

There is so much to look forward to. Dan’s life is small and insignificant and he won’t stray outside of its boundaries again, and that is exactly why the fandom and the game means so much to him still. That is why it matters to him that it will keep going. He gets to go on an entirely new adventure in the safety bubble he needs to stay within for the sake of his mental health.

Wednesday only has one downside. Coming out of work, Dan discovers three missing calls from his dad.

He will answer the next time he calls, Dan thinks. For now he wants to enjoy the excitement that Caves and Gardens brought to him and he won’t do anything to risk that. He will ride the wave and enjoy Friday’s stream. He could call back on Saturday.

Just as he is about to put his phone back in his pocket, Dan receives a text.

Phil.

Dan imagines a yellow leaf, dancing through the sky.

_Hi Dan! It is Phil. You know, the guy you had an impromptu lunch with the other day? The guy that finally convinced you that Caramel Macchiatos are superior to black coffee? Anyway, I was just wondering if you wanted to meet up for lunch again sometime next week? I have a few more coffee drinks to force you to enjoy._

The bad feeling that the missed calls from Dad stirred up in his stomach dissipate as he reads the text. Dan knows this feeling. It is the type of hopefulness that he often acts on because it feels too good not to. It is something good that slowly turns bad and then it gets worse than bad. Dan should know not to act on it. He stays aware of that fact, even as he types out his response.

_gotta love getting an essay length text from you every time lol. the caramel macchiato was the exception to the rule, mate. you proved nothing. you’re still at the hypothesis stage_

It’s safe. It isn’t a yes and it isn’t a no. When Dan sits down on the tube, he receives another text message.

_I’m a writer, Dan, of course I have a lot to say. And I did prove something! I need more evidence though, you’re right about that. I’m afraid we will have to do more testing to prove the theory_

Dan worries his bottom lip between his teeth. He is unsuccessful in holding back his smile.

_anything for science, i guess_

Phil’s response is, yet again, immediate.

_Exactly. I’ll hit you up next week then!_

Dan lets that be the end of it. He doesn’t trust himself to respond right now. Not when his efforts to stop himself from smiling remain fruitless.

-

Something is buzzing. It vibrates onto the flat surface beneath, creating an awful noise. Dan takes a hold of his phone, sleep in his bones, as he opens his eyes to the bright screen.

Dad.

It is six in the morning. His dad is on his way to work.

Anger quickly bubbles up inside. The adrenaline causes him to answer the call and push the phone to his ear.

“What?” he tries to yell.

But he is too weak from sleep to really make an impact. Instead it comes out like a whine, completely lacking the determination he felt. Dan’s anger twists.

“There you are,” Dad says.

Dan sighs.

“You’re asleep?” Dad asks.

“Yeah, I worked until twelve am,” Dan snarls.

“Well, you only work three days a week,” Dad deflects. “You can handle it.”

The cage that contains Dan’s anger is unlocked, but it isn’t rage that simmers out. It is defeat. It is sadness. Dan feels an overwhelming urge to cry out of nowhere.

It isn’t just the words that get to him. It is the intonation, the passive aggressiveness. Dan swallows the growing lump in his throat. He is acting like a child. Dad didn’t mean to be condescending. Probably.

“What’s up, dad?” Dan sighs.

“Your brother’s birthday is coming up,” Dad says. “We’re celebrating tomorrow.”

This is why Dan doesn’t answer these fucking calls.

“Alright,” Dan says.

“We want you to be there,” Dad says.

They don’t want Dan there. They want a digestible version that does nothing but sit quietly. They want another voice in the laugh choir when an inappropriate joke is made. They want the boy that they housed when he was ill, the one that feels guilty for getting to that place, the one that will do anything for them as repayment.

“Tomorrow,” Dan echoes.

“Yes, tomorrow,” Dad says. “Friday. You don’t have work on Fridays do you?”

Dan does, but he’s got tomorrow off. He has a stream to participate in.

“I do have work on Fridays,” Dan responds. 

His head is starting to swim with thoughts he isn’t awake enough to make sense of yet. He is trying to think up reasons to not have to go. All of it seems like it isn’t enough.

“Well, I presume you can get time off,” Dad says.

_You’re not a valuable addition to the work team_ , is what Dad means. _You don’t have a real job._

He doesn’t mean to be condescending. This is just what Dad is like, sometimes.

“I’ll have to check,” Dan says, but his voice sounds shallow now.

The slanted roof above his bed comes into view and his surroundings suddenly seem so separated from him. His bed doesn’t feel like his own. His head doesn’t feel like his own.

“You do that,” Dad says. “Fight for it a bit if you have to. We want you to be there.”

“Why didn’t you ask me before?” Dan asks. “You could’ve given me a heads up.”

“And give you time to come up with a lie?”

Dan detaches from the defeated feeling inside and floats away, momentarily.

“Funny,” Dan huffs.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, bear,” Dad says. “I love you.”

Dan is in a figurative chokehold that literally takes his breath away.

“I love you, too.”

Dad hangs up. Dan lies in his bed. His heart is pounding and his face feels numb. His surroundings grow more estranged from him the more he looks at them, but when he closes his eyes he sees visions that he has fought to forget for years.

It has been a while, but when it arrives it doesn’t feel like it was ever gone. It is a constant weight, pulling at his every movement, clinging to his every thought. He pretends that it isn’t there, but now that it barges in at full force, Dan can’t pretend anymore. He can’t detach from this. It is the one thing that he has fully attached to, marked into his skin permanently like a tattoo, but instead of displaying a beautiful image he chose it visualises something grotesque, the one thing he never wanted to lay his eyes on again. It isn’t art and it isn’t appealing. It is the backing vocals to his existence, a choir of taunts and reminders that he should be on the other side of but isn’t.

Dan lies in his bed and cries. He can’t close his eyes because the visions scare him. He can’t look at his surroundings to get himself out of the past and into the present, because the more he tries to the stranger his possessions look.

Dan shakes and cries and sobs and shakes some more.

After a while, he gets out of bed and into the shower. His heart is pounding in his throat but he disregards it. He gets coffee and sits down by his computer and sends a text to his dad.

_I can’t come tomorrow._

He lets himself pretend like that has any effect for a while, as he pulls up a video from his porn folder and wanks to forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Interrupted By Fireworks  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)
> 
> Hi! I wanted to pop into the notes and say hello to you all as Monochrome has gained quite a few readers in the past couple of weeks. Thank you for reading!
> 
> I also wanted to draw attention to **[this amazing art](https://twitter.com/amgsunshine0114/status/1168531309213442051)** made by **@amgsunshine0114** on twitter. The text is from a scene in chapter four and I had a full on Moment when I saw it because that is crazy! An art! Because of my fic!? That is amazing. Thank you so so much. Make sure to go and support them :') 
> 
> If you're reading this as a wip you also may have noticed that I added some tags. This is only because I've been thinking about tagging in general and thought it would be good to add some just in case anyone needs them! :)


	25. Chapter 25

At two in the afternoon, Dan gets another call.

Mum.

Dan answers.

“Hello,” he says.

His back hurts. His bed feels like a brick beneath it, hard against the tight muscles he keeps failing to relax.

“Hi, Dan,” Mum says.

The voice is not what he remembers. It sounds nothing like Mum. And yet as he hears it, images come into view like a strike of lightning, setting his guilt and shame ablaze.

It’s not fucking fair.

“Are you there?” Mum asks hesitantly.

Dan makes a noise in affirmation. He can’t speak.

“Dad said you were coming tomorrow,” Mum says. “I’d love to see you.”

As suspected, the text Dan sent out did nothing but make Dad pull out the big guns. Dan can’t say no to Mum, especially not when she already thinks that he is coming. Dad knows that. Dad knows that Dan is still terrified of ever making his mum feel upset, and he uses it against him.

“Uh-huh,” Dan says.

Words aren’t going to come out of his mouth any time soon. He doesn’t know the woman on the other end of the phone call and he has no clue how to talk to her and act like she is his mother.

“That is wonderful,” Mum cheers. “You don’t sound well though! Are you alright?”

This is a question Mum asks nowadays. This is a persona that the rest of the family accepted immediately and welcomed with open arms. Like it was a person they’d known that had been on holiday for a while. A person they had missed. Meanwhile, this is not a person that Dan has ever known. He feels uncomfortable with the idea of answering to her concern. What is she concerned with?

The spectator peeks out, but it is trembling. Dan almost feels comforted by its noise even if it is small. What it does is nothing in comparison to the situation he is being pulled into at this moment.

“Okay,” Dan chokes out. “I’m okay.”

Mum takes a breath in preparation. She has more words to speak nowadays. Dan can’t stand to hear them.

“See you tomorrow,” Dan says before Mum can say anything.

The breath is interrupted and exhaled like a sigh in Dan’s ear. She sounds exasperated. For a moment, Dan is soothed by its familiarity.

“See you tomorrow, Dan,” Mum says.

Dan hangs up. He dials the number to his work and calls in sick for the evening.

-

Barren, Dan thinks.

The light in the kitchenette is still on. Dan stares at it from his line of vision from beneath the duvet. The light is only obscured by the desk chair that is in the way but not enough to shield him from the light that seems to grow brighter the longer he looks at it. He would get up and flick it off but he can’t. His limbs are heavy, restrained by invisible cuffs beneath the duvet. There is no comfort to find here. The heat is thick with sweat that beads at his temples and Dan makes no move to switch his position. The spectator thinks that Dan should eat. It is fluttering about in an anxious panic at the back of Dan’s mind, suddenly bothered about things like missing work and eating and sticking to his schedule. Dan should eat because maybe then he won’t feel like he is drowning in the unfocused terror of the past that feels like the present because it doesn’t fucking leave. But if he eats he might feel energised enough for his heart to beat harder and spin him out of control.

Detached, Dan thinks.

The folders on the desk aren’t his. The PC was an unwise investment, only putting the inevitable shitstorm on hold, the one that would push him here again. Nothing in there is real. Jamie and Morgan and Sam and Mason and Seagull and TriangleNoses and irregularsymbol. They are only placeholders for the affection he can’t receive. That is what it is about, in the end. Dan has the opportunity to ask for it, to get something real in return, but his heart is closed. It doesn’t open up. A person could say every single correct thing and mean it with all that they are worth and Dan would twist it into lies inside his head. It doesn’t work when people say the wrong thing. It doesn’t work when people say the right thing. Dan is a broken person incapable of attaching to anything other than memories that come up, push him over the edge, until Dan somehow works to make them grow duller and duller until they are almost gone. They are never gone. Just when Dan thinks they might be, they return and they always, always feel worse than they did last. Dan wonders how bad it has to get before he stops trying.

Temporary, Dan thinks.

London isn’t his real life. Moving here was an attempt to change his life but it hasn’t changed. He only finds people to project his unresolved issues onto and thus make their lives harder. He is like a tornado, pushing past defenses and taking pieces of everyone else with him until he feels too guilty to keep doing it. Dan’s life didn’t change. Dan’s life didn’t get better. Because his bed in Wokingham felt like a brick on his back and his duvet accumulated heat and made him sweat and he always found something in his surroundings that annoyed him; something that made him unable to push everything away. The inevitable was always going to come and Dan has to face it. He has to go back to Wokingham and not participate in the stream and be the disappointment that prevents his family from ever really being right. 

The past doesn’t haunt his family; Dan does. They ask him to come back and they expect him to see what it is like now and accept it but the change only fucks him up more. It became just what he wished and prayed for only four years ago but Dan hasn’t changed, inside. He can talk for miles to Susanne and she can listen but the cycles continue again and again and this is exactly why Dan doesn’t brave the fucking cave. Because life hasn’t gone like he wanted it to and he still refuses to accept that. London is a pit stop on the road to inevitable doom and Dan hopes, briefly, that this time it actually gets so bad that he stops trying. The spectator screeches in the back of his mind, preventing him from sticking to that thought for longer than a few seconds. There are no caves and gardens here. Dan is stuck in the Shadow Realm, force fed all the things that shouldn’t have happened but did, and he can’t walk alongside it peacefully and think that he can have control over a life that never gave him a chance. 

Dan gets up and flicks the light off. It is two in the morning. His coffee is on his desk, untouched. Hunger makes him nauseous. Dehydration makes him weak. He prefers that to what will appear in his mind’s eye if he eats or drinks. He will let his himself starve until he can’t take it anymore and eats out of desperation. Hopefully it rots his useless brain. Hopefully it removes the Shadow Realm once and for all.

-

White works hard. He enters the cave almost every day. He searches and searches, and passes through rooms full of things that would make even the bravest of people shiver. He barely flinches at them. He is on a mission. He doesn’t have time to stop and look at the anxious voids in the corners of the cave. They aren’t his to deal with. It is all for show. White is getting to the end, but there is no light at the end of this tunnel. There is only dark, all encompassing and threatening. It sucks you in, and it stays, and it pushes past any defenses.

Any defenses so far, Dye is usually quick to remind them. White has stories upon stories to tell that Dan, when he first played it, was fascinated by. The defenses are being constructed carefully by Dye back in the garden, where he is safe and sound. The plants aren’t enough. They only push the darkness away. It does not enable them to enter the other realm, and it does not prevent them from taking damage.

White has the battle scars to show for it. He displays them proudly. He is proud of what he has overcome. He thinks of them as reminders; physical evidence of what he has endured. It didn’t take many adventures until White gained the title of ‘hero’ like he always wanted, at least in Dan’s eyes. He was doing all the things that Dan always wished he could do for himself. He stood up against the shadows and the void and he soldiered on forward as if the rest of it hardly scratched at him.

“It’s my duty,” White says every now and again.

It made an impact on Dan when he needed it the most. When he had every part of his life working against him, from every corner, edging him closer and closer to a darkness he wouldn’t dare to even consider entering. It helped, to call what Dan was doing at the time his ‘duty’. It helped to think of it in the grand scheme of things; as a set back that only propelled him forward, further toward the life he really wanted for himself.

What Dan failed to realise was that in his life, the cave didn’t end. It only got deeper and deeper and regardless of what confrontations he made and the duty he swore to, he couldn’t push past the portal. It never took him to the other side. The only thing it contained was that dark void. Those wispy black limbs would still wrap around his body and immobilise him.

It is a time in his life that Dan would like to forget. He got everything he wanted, but it wasn’t really his. When he completed his ‘duty’ it meant peace for the people around him, but it meant something even worse for himself.

White is a soldier. He is brave.

But Dye tends to his wounds. Dan acts like backup. When he falls, he has people there to pick him back up.

Dan didn’t have that, when he needed it the most. He had to make them up. He had to immerse his life into a story from a video game in order to cling to the ever faltering instinct to stay alive throughout it and get to the other side. He expected to not have to do that anymore, when he finally got there. London was a promiseland and Dan wasn’t needed at home anymore and his life was laid out in front of him.

Dan sometimes wonders if the pain he felt when he finally got there was worse than what he had been through before. It tortured him every day. It barged inside his skull and stayed. Dan had made it all the way through the cave only to end up there, in this other place that isn’t supposed to exist because no one deserves to feel those things or think those thoughts.

It was not worth it to push through it, so instead Dan had to grow his own garden of protective measures to ensure that he wouldn’t fall down there again.

The garden kept him safe. It provided him some happiness. Though it was small, it was something other than the echoing screams inside the cave. 

Dan has done so much. He is so tired. He has fought himself and taken a few steps back inside the cave because of course he got greedy. He thought he had the strength to handle the set back this time, but Lucy and Jimmy were never his issue. They were only extensions of his past. Acting as props, mannequins of the people he really needed closure with. The people he really needed to accept him as he is, and the fact that he may never again be able to feel the type of love for them that they claim to feel for him.

It only took a nudge. The sounds of Mum and Dad’s voices and the insistence that he come home, for Dan to understand that he has made no progress and he can’t take more than two steps inside the cave because it isn’t fucking worth it to be pushed all the way to the end and be swallowed up by the dark.

The garden is safe but he doesn’t get to spend as much time there as he would like to. Eventually the crops he grew die out and if he isn’t quick enough to replant the protection he won’t have any armour against the shadows that have been waiting around for him to stop ignoring them.

It is just a birthday party and it is just a stream and in the end Dan could push it all away. Nothing bad and nothing good, only the in between. 

Dan is aware of this and yet he gets on the train come Friday morning. He messages irregularsymbol and tells her that he can’t make it tonight because something came up. The closer he gets to Wokingham, the more Dan feels himself slip back into the persona he took on when his parents had needed him to. It still helps to think of it as his duty, to go back there. It still helps to think of it as something to pass through and come out the other side of, stronger. Dan is aware that it isn’t true, but it still helps.

Dan’s phone buzzes in his hand when he is only a few stops away from his hometown.

**Seagull** : Sad to hear you aren’t able to attend tonight! I hope you are alright, and if you aren’t alright I hope it gets better quickly. Squawk <3

Dan feels his insides crumble and he fixes his eyes on the towns rolling by past the train window but he can’t see them behind the tears that he refuses to let out.

He is on duty when he is here. He gets to come out the other side soon enough.

-

Memories lurk everywhere he looks. He goes on the same bus as he always does, from Reading to Wokingham. He takes the same route from the bus stop to his home. He looks at the same trimmed bushes and the same pavement and the same dreary sky. He walks past the same houses, containing the same families, and he feels the same dread inside his stomach the closer he gets to the one that supposedly contains his.

He can push the memories away as much as he likes, but it doesn’t work. He can pretend like the pavement is just pavement and that the path leading up to his old house is just a path, but they aren’t just that. Dan can pretend to be a soldier and push through it all. He can take on the blame and put his all into helping the people that can’t ever properly acknowledge the things they put him through, under the veil that it was them helping him.

Dan wants to cling to the lie. He wants to be a soldier.

Dan wants to keep pretending that he dropped out of university because of his own mental health problems. He wants to keep pretending that moving back home was something he had to do, in order to build his own life back up. 

Dan knocks on the door that should just be a door but isn’t.

Mum opens it up. She has painted her face and brushed her hair and put on nice clothes. She even smiles. In this moment, she is the perfect picture of a mum that finally sees her son again and takes him into his arms like he belongs wrapped inside them. Mum should just be a mum, but she isn’t.

Dan feels weak in her embrace and fights to keep the illusion going. He can’t. He has been doing it for too long. Inside this house, his defenses drop.

Dan’s mind goes on rewind and he is back to the week before he moved back home. The events are going to replay in his mind and Dan can’t stop them from doing so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: How To Disappear Completely by Radiohead  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	26. Chapter 26

**I** | Overture _(past)_

Boxes upon boxes of useless crap cover Dan’s floors.

There is one, labelled _music stuff_. It contains CDs, sheet music, concert tickets, festival bracelets, and merch T-shirts that won’t fit him anymore. He dragged that box to university, when he moved there. He dragged the box back, unopened, to Wokingham and this flat. He has no use for it. There is sentimental crap that smell like memories of nights his old schoolmates sometimes still speak about with a nostalgic glint in their eyes. Dan’s version of those memories are a far shot away from the experiences he tries to forget and replace with something more wistful. The bands had been good. He had actually laughed a couple of times. Regardless, it is the anxiety of looming threats that has settled into those items. Dan still picks it up off of the floor and brings it downstairs, into Dad’s car.

It isn’t like he owns a lot of things, anyway. He has only lived away from home for a few years. He only properly moved two years ago, after he gave up on university. There isn’t a lot to accumulate during that time, especially not when Dan’s inability to keep a job for more than a few months left his bank account empty. That doesn’t stop him from feeling angry, though. For every box he picks up off the floor and carries downstairs, he feels a little more resentment towards all of these supposed-to-be sentimental items that are, ultimately, tainted by the way he was forced to mold himself into something ‘normal’. If that meant getting pissed enough to not remember that he kissed his girlfriend, so be it.

Dad is silent during the car ride back to the old house. Dan doesn’t dare to breathe.

When Dad tells him they should carry his things into his room immediately instead of taking a break and eating some food to refuel, Dan doesn’t say a word. He carries most of the boxes, fueled by the desire to close the door to his room and pretend like nothing is happening.

Nothing is happening, really. Dan has spent most of the year here. Now it is simply made official. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. Dan is too tired of walking between this house and his flat in chaotic panic versus pure emotional exhaustion to give a fuck that he is doing the thing that no twenty four year old ever wants to do.

Dan slumps on top of his old rickety bed. His hands are shaking from overexertion, but he isn’t tired. He remains alert, trying to hear any sound of commotion coming from downstairs. Mum was in the bedroom when they arrived. She probably hasn’t noticed that Dan is here.

It fucking hurts. That’s the worst part. Dan wants a mummy that will come into his room and ask him how he is doing and if he needs anything. But the fact of the matter is that if he had a mummy like that, he wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.

There is something like hope, clinging to this solution. As time starts to move and Dan gets used to mostly hiding out in this room again there seems to be nothing to indicate that his presence has made things any worse. He is supposed to make things better. While he looks for a job and makes sure things are going fine at home, Dad can finally go to work uninterrupted. He doesn’t have to stop in the middle of the day and call Dan up and order him to race back to the house and make sure Mum won’t choke on her own vomit.

It is the most peaceful couple of weeks Dan has experienced since he moved to university. Mum stays in her bedroom most of the time, only exiting it to retrieve some food or drink or even wash up every few days. Dan hears sounds coming from there as she sleeps to some Netflix show playing on her tablet. Of course, Dan would like a mummy that doesn’t live in her nightgown or smells like thirteen difficult years or avoids him like a plague. But if he had a mummy like that, Dan wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.

-

It happens when Dan comes home from walking Colin. The dog seems to sense an issue the moment they arrive at the front door. He paces anxiously as Dan pulls the keys out of his pocket and Dan smiles down fondly, thinking about how excited Colin still gets even at this age.

It isn’t excitement.

There is anxiety hanging in the air that Colin picked up on. Dan walks in on an open refrigerator and what seems to be the remnants of a meal that hasn’t been finished cooking. He turns off the oven and closes the refrigerator door. There are no signs of Mum but Dan knows where she is. Dan’s glass heart is still intact, but he feels it when another crack springs through it. He has no idea how much more it will take before it breaks.

Dan stands in the hallway leading to Mum’s room and breathes deep breaths, knowing he will need to prepare for whatever situation he is about to walk in on. He doesn’t stall for long. He made the mistake of thinking something wasn’t life or death before, and at the time it was almost too late. Dan will never make a mistake like that again.

When Dan opens the door, his eyes zero in on the boxed wine on the bedside table. Then, they move to Mum, sat on the edge of the bed. She has her turquoise nightgown on and a pink blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her hair is pushed forward, shoulder length brown curls hanging around her face. She is so thin and so frail and not-Mum.

Dan walks towards her and shakes her shoulder. He is going to brave this. It can’t go on like this. He can’t be gone for half an hour and come back to a person that is so far away and intoxicated you would think they had spent an entire weekend with pure alcohol attached to their veins through an IV drip.

Mum looks up and she smiles at him. She coughs, the sound sudden and startling. Dan feels it vibrating onto his hand where it is placed on her shoulder. It is low and uncharacteristic. The sound reminds him of a car engine, when the fuel is low.

“You need to go to sleep, Mum,” Dan says.

“I am,” Mum slurs. It isn’t Mum’s voice. “I was about to.”

She chuckles. It is the kind of laugh that only comes when you are so drunk that there is no way you will remember it in the morning.

There is an eerie silence here, but Dan can only hear screaming. He isn’t sure he has ever heard an imagined sound so viscerally, so startling, so loud that no more than a few thoughts poke through. The scream dies down and Dan isn’t really here. He leads Mum to lie down in bed and pulls the duvet on top of her. He hovers over her for a moment, simply staring at the face that has the features of his Mum but looks nothing like her. Dan feels it so sharply for a moment and then it disappears, replaced by nothing. 

“You should sleep,” Dan says. “I’ll go get you some crackers and water for when you wake up. And a bucket if you need to be sick.”

The feeling vibrates down his arms and makes his hands shake.

“Thank you,” Mum surprises him by responding. “That’s nice of you. You’re a good boy, Dan.”

She falls asleep the second she finishes speaking. Dan turns off the lights in the bedroom and leaves. He feeds Colin and puts the glass of water and crackers on a tray that he carries to Mum’s bedroom and places on her bedside table. He takes the boxed wine, empties it down the sink, and disposes of the box in the recycle bin. He goes to the cleaning cabinet and gets the bucket. He places it beside Mum’s side of the bed, leaves the door ajar, and goes to his bedroom. He doesn’t close the door.

Dan sits down in his desk chair. The piss yellow walls taunt him with their optimism. The colourful decorations in the house just proves how much of a fraud his family really is. Mum is a brilliant actor when she meets anyone but Dan and Dad. She puts on a face that Dan hates because she never puts the effort into looking that happy for the people that she is supposed to love the most.

Maybe he doesn’t love them the most. Maybe that smile is reserved for Grandma and Adrian because they make her smile.

Dan thinks about texting Dad and decides against it. The reason Dan is here is so that Dad won’t be interrupted at work. They will talk later.

When Dan lies down in bed, he listens closely. He can’t hear a sound from Mum’s bedroom. So he gets up, enters her bedroom, puts his hand by her mouth and waits until he feels a breath against the back of it. He does, eventually. He always does. It doesn’t bring his shoulders down. It doesn’t make him feel happy or relieved.

Dan returns to his bedroom to find Colin on his bed. He nearly cracks. There is something approaching that he will bite back for now, but Colin’s innocent display of affection reaches inside of him and takes him back to the present, which is a place he doesn’t want to be in. It makes him almost feel angry.

Dan doesn’t act on that anger. He lies down on the bed and buries his face in Colin’s soft fur and breathes in the comforting dog scent and listens to the urgent dog panting and allows that to be the present, for now. Because that is a moment he can deal with. That is a moment he wants to attach to.

-

Dad actually hugs Dan sometimes, at the end of the days that Mum drinks. He tells him that he is kind hearted. He displays the kind of affection that Dan rarely saw growing up. Dad looks apologetic, speaking in an unfamiliar tone of voice that soothes one part of Dan and worries another. There is a lack of macho bravery in those moments that makes Dan feel hopeful. He finds himself watching Dad silently and thinking that he is lucky to have him, despite everything that has happened.

They can find each other inside this chaos, sometimes. They have a common goal that they are working towards and it makes Dan feel, oddly, like he belongs. He can face all of this if there is someone by his side that understands. It isn’t as difficult and it keeps his heart intact when Dad hugs him and compliments him. He is the dad that was missing when Dan was alone in a house full of people and only found that kind of comfort with Grandma. Ever since the secret keeping started, he has lost that comfort with her. Adrian has it now that he lives there. Dan wants to feel resentful because Nana is supposed to be _his_. Adrian got the parental affection and guidance that they couldn’t bother to give to Dan. Now Adrian has both the parental affection, and Nana’s affection. Dan has Dad sometimes treating him like a person while every other person in his life grows more and more estranged from him.

Dan can’t count on Dad’s affection, though.

Some days he returns from work with a chip on his shoulder. Dan can’t say a thing without Dad snapping back. He can’t go downstairs to the kitchen to get something without Dad stopping him in his tracks, asking him when he is going to get a job because he can’t keep providing for him forever. He likens Dan’s ‘slacking’ to Mum. He tells him that sometimes he reminds him so much of her that he feels sick to his stomach.

“Is that what you want to end up as?” Dad asks.

He puts his coffee cup down on the kitchen table with a slam. Dan has learned to not jump at those sounds anymore, but his heart is beating harder. He can brave this. Dad doesn’t know shit.

“I’m not ‘ending up’ as anything,” Dan says.

“Clearly,” Dad says.

He has zeroed in on Dan and as long as Dan stays silent and takes the abuse with no back talk it will fade out peacefully. If Dan says something, there is no telling how far it will go.

At the same time, Dan has spent a day with Mum while they both pretended she hadn’t been drinking. Dan swears the smell of liquor still lingers in his nostrils. Dad doesn’t know this and if he did, he wouldn’t be saying these things. Because love in Dan’s house is conditional. If Dan hasn’t proven his worth in some time he becomes useless, unloveable, in Dad’s eyes.

So maybe he is angry. Maybe he wants to talk back.

When Dan speaks, he raises his voice and Dad raises his voice back. It is a back and forth of placing blame when both of them know that the person responsible for much of this is currently sleeping upstairs. Dan fucking hates his dad right now. He isn’t much better than he is, after all. Dan loves his dad as conditionally as Dad loves him, and if that isn’t give and take, then what is?

It ends with Dan in his bedroom with Colin at his feet as he goes on his computer searching for a distraction. It takes too long. Eventually, Dan gets up and checks that Mum is breathing and comes back. He does this five times before something finally gets his mind off of the here and now and focuses it in on something that might stop him from wondering if Mum drank enough to kill herself this time.

Dan hasn’t been able to play games for a while. He can’t afford them, his computer can’t handle a lot of them, so when Steam recommends him a 2D indie game that only costs ten pounds, he makes the purchase and decides not to think about it.

Fall Whisperer. The art on its page is of two characters. One has white hair, and the other has long blue hair. There is purple and green surrounding their shapes. It looks relaxing enough. It installs quickly and once it loads, Dan is brought into a different world that he won’t leave for a long time.

-

Dan’s life is walks with Colin, taking care of Mum, affection/dislike from Dad, and Fall Whisperer.

It helps to think of his current situation as the Shadow Realm. A distorted version of reality. Something that wasn’t supposed to be created and shouldn’t exist, but does. It stays and it holds on. Dan never asked for this to be his purpose but that is what it has turned into. Dan never had a choice. He is trapped here. He can’t escape. Any complaints are met by guilt tripping, and putting the blame on Dan’s own mental illness. Dad says that Dan needs this break as much as Mum does. Because Dan’s situation is comparable to hers. Because the life Dan is living now is considered time off, leisure. Dan agrees that it isn’t at all like his real life, if that is what constitutes a time off or leisure. Dan’s life is the Shadow Realm, and there is nothing in it but pain and suffering and trying to forgive the unforgivable.

Nothing makes Dan cry. Nothing, except when he finally enters the Shadow Realm with Dye and White. When all the build-up and lore surrounding this place reaches its peak and is finally revealed. Dan expects something fantastical and horrific. He expects, like White, a battle to fight and win in order to get to the happy ending.

There is no such thing to find there. When they faze inside the area, past the anxious void of the cave, amethyst and emerald merged into a wonder of green and purple, Dan initially thinks that they have failed the mission. The railroad looks exactly like the one back in their timeline. This is supposed to be an alternate reality, the distressing anxious place that contains only horror and grief. But there is no screaming and there are no urgent words. The Shadow Realm is silent, almost serene. Dye and White barely react. They look almost exasperated, as they stand silently.

Dan’s heart expands when he looks at their clasped hands. They are only doing that to keep the crystals merged, but Dan wants to believe otherwise.

They meet their Shadow Selves, but they aren’t dark versions of them. They are simply alternate versions. Dye looks almost exactly like his shadow self. So does White.

But Dan. Dan looks nothing like his own. Their clothing choice is different and their hair is different in colour and style and at first Dan thinks it is a glitch or that it is because the player gets to customise their sprite however they like, but then Dan’s shadow self begins to speak.

“Unbelievable,” he says. “I’ve been working so hard at this and you’re still not me.”

Dan doesn’t get it.

This is not the Shadow he expected. He expected a ghoul. Something absolutely haunting. But this is a realm that looks exactly like their own. With a slight tint of red and some eerie noises in the distance, but otherwise the same. Dye and White’s shadows are their match, except Dye’s hair is parted on the other side and his hair is in a ponytail instead of in a braid. White’s hair flops a bit, while the White of Dan’s world’s hair is spiked. 

This has always been the end goal. White has said, again and again, that they have to get to the cave and move past the darkness and enter the next realm for their mission to be completed. They will finally have to face this version of reality and get rid of it once and for all. They have to put an end to the suffering it puts people through, in their world.

White lies, though. Dan still hasn’t fully recovered from that twist. He never imagined that Dye and White, supposed enemies, had been working together in secret. It got them to the other side, but now Dan can’t help but think that this is another thing they have lied about. They don’t seem as startled by it all as Dan feels.

“You have not Fallen yet, have you?” Shadow-Dye asks.

His face is as gentle and soothing as the real Dye. Dan gets two options for a response.

_> No. I will try again._  
_> What are you talking about?_

Dan chooses the second response. His shadow self cackles. The ground begins to shake.

“Try harder,” his shadow says.

The screen goes black for a second, followed by a haze of purple and green that gets clearer and clearer until it’s all gone, revealing Dye, White, and Dan’s character inside of Dye’s cabin. They are back in the real world.

Nothing happens. It is a cut scene but no one says anything. Dan doesn’t get it.

“I guess we have something to tell you,” White says eventually.

“We do,” Dye agrees.

The music is so soft and emotional that despite not understanding, tears roll down Dan’s cheek.

“Dan,” Dye says. “Would you like to hear a story?”

Dan chooses ‘ _yes_ ’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Exogenesis: Symphony Pt.1 (Overture) by Muse  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)
> 
> This week, tumblr user lqtrianglenoses posted **[this amazing fan art](https://lqtrianglenoses.tumblr.com/post/187694499542/currently-obsessed-with-intoapuddle-s-fic)** and I just want to tell them thank you so so much and I encourage you all to go check it out because it is beautiful :')


	27. Chapter 27

**II** | Cross-Pollination _(past)_

Dan is a soldier.

He is so deep inside the cave that he can no longer see the light from the entrance. His only guides are the hidden, trapped crystals glowing amber to lead the way. They are something to hold on to. They are a pat on the back from Dad. They are Colin licking his cheek. They are the couple of weeks after Mum returns from detoxing at the hospital, when she finally makes some sense and doesn’t drink. Dan enters the brightest room when Mum hugs him, and tells him that it is over now. They are followed by pitch black darkness. There are no crystals to be found. White says that they are still there, even in those rooms. They are just trapped within the cave walls, so no light comes out. Dan can’t believe that when Mum drinks after promising not to. The darkness reminds him of how naive he still is to her addiction. Though he no longer consciously believes her when she tells him it is over for good this time, the contrast of colourful light to darkness makes it evident that some part of him still wants to believe it so badly that he does, subconsciously. 

Hoping, so far, has been to Dan’s detriment. He wishes he could stifle that hope. He wishes he could put out all of the crystal lights so that his eyes can properly adjust to the darkness. When he spends long enough in those dark rooms of the cave, he is eventually able to make his way just fine. The dark doesn’t look as dark and the cold doesn’t feel as cold. He is enveloped by a nothingness, one that doesn’t push him forwards or pull him backwards, but it is something he can deal with amidst the cave walls. Where chaos looms and the cries from the shadow realm sound the loudest.

In the aftermath of intense chaotic moments, Dan sheds his battle armour.

He ends up in his bed with the lights turned off. His bed is a brick and he feels too hot and he probably needs to eat, but he can’t tell unless he moves. So Dan keeps still. He lets himself be immobilised by the end of the cave, where the deepest dark takes hold of him and tries to pull him in. Dan forgets to struggle against it. He becomes engulfed in those depths. It feels like nothing and everything at the same time. All that the spectator has to offer in terms of condolence is the possibility to really end this. Once Mum has recovered, and Dad can handle her on his own. That is when Dan will finally stop it all. It is enough motivation to struggle against the bounds of his bed, the bounds of the darkness. He promises the dark that he will return, and step through, when his circumstances allow him to. The darkness believes him because he means it, in those moments. He is allowed out of there just in time for the next emergency.

Dan puts on the torn armour yet again and readies himself for battle.

-

Dan isn’t always alone. He has one person in this town that can’t help him in any way but by sympathising, because she has the same battle to fight.

The tea Haley made is too strong but Dan drinks it desperately. He listens and nods and hums when she tells him that her mum never listens. Haley talks about all of the plastic bottles she finds hidden in various corners of the flat and throws out time and time again. She talks about the harsh words she and her mum exchange. She talks about the monster her mum becomes when she drinks. Abusive words thrown, blame passed, hateful and cutting.

Dan doesn’t have the same experience. He doesn’t yell at his mum when she drinks. He simply takes care of her.

Mum doesn’t turn into a typical kind of monster when she drinks. She doesn’t bare her fangs and her claws don’t come out. Instead, the person that emerges when Mum drinks is one that smiles. It is a person that sits beside Dan in the living room and asks him how he is doing. She asks him about work prospects. She asks him about his mental health, and whether he is going to accept the doctor’s offer to treat him with medication. 

Dan doesn’t know what’s worse. Is it worse when the monster is plain to see, filled with anger that comes out through abuse? Or is it worse when the monster hides behind politeness and treats her son like a mother should? Does the growing knowledge that any smile or interest in Dan’s life comes from intoxication and ways of keeping up appearances to keep tending to the addiction hurt more? Does it hurt more when the claws cut you before you’ve seen them?

Dan can’t tell. Perhaps it isn’t something you are supposed to compare. All he knows is that Mum feels happy, for a moment, when she drinks. When she is sober, Dan doesn’t exist in her world. Meanwhile, Dad pats Dan on the back as long as he keeps enabling Mum’s toxic behaviour.

When he doesn’t, things don’t exactly work out.

“I don’t fucking understand it,” Dan says once Haley finishes speaking. “You call her out on it every time. She has to face the consequences every single time. And she still does it.”

Haley’s mum is functional in a way that Dan’s isn’t. Haley’s mum can keep a job and keep up the pretense that Haley is the one that is delusional, trying to find issues where there are none to be found.

“She doesn’t care,” Haley says. “It’s not a consequence to her if I get upset.”

It stings. Dan puts the cup down and sits back on Haley’s sofa and lets his eyes wander over her brown ponytail and the blank expression on her face. Her shoulder still tenses. That is the place where Dan can find her emotions, in the brief flex of a muscle. It is no wonder she complains that her body hurts.

It isn’t a consequence to Dan’s mum, either. She is too wrapped up in her never-wavering need to stay intoxicated to see past it and realise that anyone else is hurting in the first place. Everyone else is simply an obstacle to get past. Smooth out enough feathers, and she will get to a peaceful moment that enables her to drink.

“Cheers to that, I guess,” Dan says.

They chuckle and clink their mugs together. A stretch of silence follows.

“It’s so weird how we literally depended on each other to survive our teens and never talked about it,” Dan says.

Haley hums. They have talked about this before. Their conversations have turned into a bit of a broken record. When nothing in the environments change, that is bound to happen. There is nothing new to offer, but the comfort of understanding is still there so it doesn’t matter.

“I’m glad we finally did talk about it,” Haley says. “Not that I’m happy that you’re going through this, but… I am glad that you can understand me.”

Talking to anyone other than Haley about this is a different experience. Every word holds that much more weight. Appearing exasperated rather than horrified at yet another relapse makes it sound like the pain is completely gone. The flatness of your voice as you retell another story makes for discomfort. Well meaning words of comfort and reasonable upset at the situation Dan finds himself in bleed out onto Dan and makes him feel it more rather than less after confiding.

Haley only needs to sit quietly while Dan talks for that comfort and _less_ to reach him. She just gets it. She always got it. When they spent every day out in town together getting up to nothing but walking and laughing and joking, they were both running from a home situation they couldn’t bear to be in for longer than they absolutely had to and even though they didn’t talk about that, it helped.

Dan doesn’t get to see Haley nearly enough. His life is filled with other things that take up too much time. Even though events are slow and nothing really happens for long periods of time, the time it takes to build back up after chaotic moments doesn’t make for much recreational socialisation.

It is nice when they get the time, and they both feel able to. The tea may taste too strong and Dan might not get as many words in as Haley does, but he appreciates it.

-

It a clear summer day and Dan is on his way to the coffee shop after a job interview when Dad calls.

“You have to go home,” is what he says first thing when Dan answers.

He sounds upset. The rage is barely contained. Words spit out with hard consonants that feel like a slap in the face even though they aren’t directed at Dan.

“Why?” Dan asks.

His heart is already pounding.

“Your mum is not sober and you have to keep an eye on her until I get home.”

Dan immediately reroutes from the coffee shop and to the bus station.

“Okay,” is all he says.

“I’ll see you later,” Dad says. “I’ll try to get home as quickly as possible.”

They hang up after exchanging quick goodbyes. Something about this time feels different. The sun is high in the sky, warm against Dan’s skin. The sky is clear. The weather has the audacity to tell the lie of a nice day when Dan is going to go home to yet another situation that he won’t know the severity of until he gets there.

It comes as sparks during the bus ride home. Some part of Dan has had enough and the sadness he usually feels has turned into anger that makes him feel focused. He has to end this, somehow. He keeps treating Mum nice and tries his best to never upset her, all the time. He lets her sit and stew in the garden and effectively destroy herself in the process. She is never going to get better. If she won’t walk out of the garden herself, Dan will have to drag her into the cave on his own. Being nice doesn’t work, anyway. As much as Dan tries and tries to keep from saying things that will upset her and make her drink, she still gets upset. She still drinks.

So Dan might as well be the one to upset her. He might as well scream at her. She keeps fucking doing this to him and it isn’t okay. Dan is halfway through the cave, but he is walking it alone. He won’t get to the end without her. He won’t be able to fulfill his promise to the darkness until she gets better. Right now, Dan wants nothing more than to fulfill that promise. He just wants it all to stop. His throat feels scratchy and his eyes are dry and his body is shaking as he hurries from the bus stop to the house.

When Dan opens the front door, he finds mum on the sofa. She is sleeping. There is a glass on the table, half empty, holding a clear liquid. Dan sniffs it when he makes his way inside. The smell is so strong it makes him feel dizzy.

“Mum,” Dan says.

He doesn’t recognise his own voice. Something inside has been ignited. The armour has been thrown to the side and he stands bare before the woman that keeps hurting him, time and time again. She doesn’t deserve his carefulness. She doesn’t deserve his help. She never gave anything in return. Dan keeps fighting and fighting but the mum he wishes he could get back never existed in the first place. He can’t remember a time when she took an interest in his life or knew what was going on in it, even at its worst points. What kind of a person does that? What kind of a parent has such a blatant disregard for their child’s well being?

Dan feels like crying. Mum wakes up.

“What?” she says, blinking slowly. “Oh, hi Dan. It’s nice to see you.”

She is smiling.

“Oh, is it?” Dan spits.

“Of course,” she says as she sits up, slurring and wobbly. “Come sit.”

She pats the pillow next to her. Dan remains stood.

“No, thanks,” Dan says. “I’m taking you to hospital.”

The smile fades.

“What are you talking about?”

Dan’s heart pounds and the amber lights go red, bright neon that light up the entire cave. Dan wishes fleetingly that White will find him here, because he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to go through this alone.

“You’ll have to go to hospital,” Dan repeats. “You are fucking wasted, Mum. I can’t pump your fucking stomach at home, can I?”

The look in Mum’s eyes is almost enough to kill Dan’s spirits. There is only hatred to be found in those eyes that match the colour of Dan’s. The red lights flicker.

Mum doesn’t respond. She gets up, and makes her way to the kitchen. Dan follows her.

“What are you doing? He asks.

She is packing a bag. For a moment, Dan thinks she is agreeing to go with him to the hospital.

“I’ll sleep at a hotel,” she says. “I can’t be here, apparently.”

A chill goes down Dan’s spine. She is really planning on driving in this state.

“No the fuck you aren’t,” Dan hears himself say.

He watches as she packs a box of wine that she had hidden at the bottom of the cleaning cabinet. Mum pushes past Dan and makes her way outside.

The red lights are flashing. The screams of the shadow realm are deafening. Dan hurries after Mum and all he feels is adrenaline, coursing through his veins, while a small voice sits on the outside of the situation and asks how the hell this is happening to him.

This doesn’t really happen to people.

People don’t really have to grab their mum’s wrists as she reaches for the car door handle. People don’t really have to physically hold on to her as she tries to force herself to get past. People don’t really have to keep doing it until their mum breaks down in sobs. In her nightgown, on the street, plain for everybody to see.

“I have to go,” Mum repeats in a shaky voice.

This doesn’t really happen to people.

Just when Dan is at a loss as to what to do, Dad pulls up in the driveway and gets out of the car and grabs Mum. Dan can’t distinguish the words. Dad isn’t yelling. He is speaking in a cutting, condescending voice that Dan doesn’t know what to make of. He doesn’t know who to feel sorry for. He doesn’t know how to react. He doesn’t know what the fuck to even _do_.

Life doesn’t prepare you for situations that only happen to people in stories.

“You go to your room, Dan,” Dad says eventually. “I’ll take care of her.”

Dan feels like protesting.

“I don’t want to see him,” Mum says through her sobs. “I don’t want him in the house.”

Tears are streaming down her face. Dan finds himself resenting those tears. She isn’t the one that is supposed to be crying right now.

Dan expects Dad to disregard her words, but instead he looks at Dan pleadingly.

“Can you just give us a moment here, Dan?” he asks in an almost whispered tone.

This doesn’t really happen to people.

“Okay,” Dan says.

The fight leaves him as he walks down the street, rejected by the people he again and again and a-fucking-gain stand on alert for to help.

Dan walks for hours until he eventually goes back home. It is dark and the house is quiet. Dan doesn’t go to bed. He gets on his computer and starts up Fall Whisperer. He has to figure out how to get to the real ending at some point.

-

The next day starts with Dan opening his eyes to Dad, sitting on Dan’s desk chair, looking at him intently. Dan feels like a teenager again, briefly, as the look in Dad’s eyes is familiar to him. Dan is going to be taught a lesson, but for right now Dan can’t tell why or what he did wrong.

“I talked to Mum,” Dad says.

Dan sits up and pulls the duvet up to cover his bare chest.

“You can’t treat her like that.”

Dan remains silent.

“You nearly broke her by coming at her with that much aggression. It wasn’t a serious situation. All I needed you to do was to keep an eye on her and wait until I came back home and instead you accelerated the situation. Do you think that makes your mum get better, Dan? She is hurting. You should have empathy for that.”

Dan remembers waking up to a room covered in snow and the anxious pounding it caused in his chest as he prepared to be lectured for it. Dan remembers how hard he cried even after they explained to him that Dad had placed it there as a surprise. Dan remembers the exasperated look on Dad’s face as Dan couldn’t react the way he wanted him to. How he could never meet his Dad’s expectations in any way, shape or form.

“You’re only lying in bed or playing games all day. How would you feel if I did that to you? Claimed that you had to go to hospital immediately because you are clearly not mentally stable? Would you feel helped by that, Dan? You’re not much better than she is.”

Dan remembers coming home from school one day, as his sides ached after being wrestled down by a classmate. He remembers how he grinned and beared it, without a thought to tell anyone else. He remembers how he sat next to Dad on the sofa that evening. He remembers how the news talked about a gay man that had been assaulted in the streets of London and how Dad had scoffed, claiming that they exaggerated the story.

“You shouldn’t be around if you’re just going to make the situation worse,” Dad finalises.

“I’m the one that made it worse,” Dan says, voice stifled and disbelieving.

“You have to think about what this is like for her,” Dad says.

“Okay,” Dan says. “Sure.”

Dad looks at him for a moment. He thinks he sees something other than the protectiveness that Dad only ever extends to Mum. Then Dan realises that it is only exasperation. Because Dan can’t act or be who he wants him to be. All he wants is for Dan to be on standby and wait until Mum drinks herself to death and if he says anything ever, or acts on his own emotions rather than bending over for everyone else’s, he is an ungrateful brat that doesn’t empathise with other people.

Dan has done enough empathising. There is none left in him anymore. He only makes things worse and the cave doesn’t fucking work because Mum and Dad punish him for every attempt he makes to take them there with him. They want him to remain as blissfully ignorant as they are in the garden, scrambling to keep those plants growing even if they die quicker and quicker for every time it happens.

After Dad leaves, apparently satisfied with the conversation, Dan falls apart.

He doesn’t fall apart like he has before, though. This is on a different level. He has idle thoughts, asking if he is exaggerating, but he can’t stop the way his body convulses. He can’t stop the way it shakes. He can’t stop the loud sobs, so he pushes his face into his pillow and bites down in order to smother the sounds.

He hasn’t cried like this before. Not when people in school taunted him every day. Not when they hit him. Not when he broke up with Haley. Not when the boy he had a crush on rejected him. Not when he came home from school, day after day, to find mum on the sofa, completely oblivious to his existence.

He didn’t cry like this when he got to university and realised that he couldn’t do it. He didn’t cry like this when he experienced his first proper debilitating depression.

But he is crying like this now and he doesn’t know if he will ever stop. His glass heart is shattering for every sob spit into the pillow. It feels like a hammer is pounding at it. When the pieces are scattered around, it pounds at them too until all that is left is a pile of sharp little blades that surely can’t ever be made into a functioning organ again.

Even as Dan’s body stops convulsing and the tears stop coming, he doesn’t feel like it stopped. He can feel every inch of the sharpest of pain for hours and hours until it ends.

He has to get out of here. He has to get on antidepressants. He has to do something to make his life his own, because no matter how much he tries to, the people in this house won’t ever see him as anything but a soldier. Dan doesn’t want to be their fucking soldier anymore. He doesn’t want to come to the rescue each and every time there is a problem.

But Dan still loves them. He wants to feel accepted by them.

That hurts most of all.

-

These are the years when he is supposed to make a life for himself. He is supposed to travel to new places and learn new things and fall in love and start to build an actual life for himself, independent from his family.

Dan’s early twenties are spent cleaning up messes and taking care of Mum after detox and pleading to her again and again, won’t she _please_ consider rehab?

The effort he put into school in spite of how toxic that environment was for him was not worth it. He hasn’t been able to go to university anyway.

Dan wonders if the effort he puts in at home are worth it despite the effects it is having on him. Nothing ever seems to change.

Until, one day, it does.

-

Dye’s story is told through a cut scene. It shows something called the Shadow Realm, but it doesn’t look like anything Dan imagined the Shadow Realm would look like. It looks exactly like the real world. There are no haunted people that need help in Dye’s story. There is simply an alternate timeline, going on next to ours, and sometimes the shadows get to communicate with the other world. Through children, until about the age of ten. Through some adults, because they remain attuned to that realm. There aren’t answers to why, yet. It is simply how some people in this world work. They can’t help it. They don’t have a choice. Their worlds get split in two and if they really want to, they can visit the other one.

“It isn’t my world,” Dan’s character says. “I don’t want it.”

“It is your world,” White disagrees. “It isn’t a matter of wanting it or not.”

Dye explains that in order to get the voices to stop, you have to work to make your shadow self match yourself. If you are different from it, it creates an imbalance that affects the world around you. It affects your well being. It doesn’t matter what you go for - plants or crystals or caves or gardens - unless you fight to match your shadow and accept its presence, your life won’t change.

Dan doesn’t get it. What does it even mean, to match the shadow? To him, it sounds like a metaphor for allowing yourself to wallow in your depression. What kind of a message is that? Wallowing doesn’t change anything. Why would he ever want to match the darkest parts of himself? Why would he accept a life that keeps hurting him?

It isn’t like the story has to work around a metaphor about mental health struggles. Dan simply took it to mean that, because the cave and the garden looked like different paths he could take in recovery, and in dealing with his mum’s addiction. The shadow realm seemed like the thing to defeat. The darkness at the end of the cave seemed like it would have to be destroyed once and for all.

Dye and White keep repeating that that isn’t want they are meant to be doing. It will always exist. All the experiments Dan’s character went through as a child and teen were wrong, because the people that wanted access to that part of him wanted to destroy it. But it is something that simply can’t be destroyed. It will always be a part of him. It will walk alongside him and he will be reminded from time to time. It might not be something that he wants. Sometimes it can get scary. But it isn’t wrong. As long as one stays mindful of that fact, it gets easier to deal with. 

It isn’t about pushing things away, after all. 

Dan goes through the end of the game with mixed feelings, the first time. He loves the game. He loves the atmosphere, and the characters, and the message. It is only the end, the resolution of it all, that doesn’t completely resonate with him.

Mum finally goes to a rehabilitation centre for six months, when Dan is twenty five. He becomes free to spread his wings and do the things he was incapable of doing when he had to take care of her. Dad helps him find a place in London, on the condition that he sees a therapist once a week and tries his best to get back to a normal pace of life. Dan agrees because when Dad puts it that way, it really seems like he genuinely cares that Dan does well for himself. He probably does. It doesn’t stop Dan from feeling judgement and resentment for the fact that Dan has to do these things and live a smaller life than everyone around him, but at least it means that he finally gets to leave Wokingham.

Everything seems to be going okay for a while. Dan sees a therapist and gets a job and he only hears good news about Mum’s progress at rehab. He might be ignoring his Dad’s calls like the plague and feel an intense swell of anxiety any time any family members try to get ahold of him, but he thinks that that it is something that will pass and get better with time. He needs to become settled in London, anyway. He doesn’t have time to bother with his family. He already lost several years of his life to making theirs easier.

Everything goes okay until it doesn’t. Because Mum returns from rehab and Dad orders Dan to be at home for two weeks to greet her and establish new relationships within the family and finally talk things out.

Everything is fucking perfect. Mum acts like a real person and she has genuine conversations and she doesn’t lie on the sofa all day and she doesn’t escape to the bedroom. She cooks and cleans and wears makeup and nice clothes. She smells good and ruffles Dan’s hair and smiles at him like she really, truly loves him. She is attuned to her own emotions and the emotions of the people around her. She is the ideal version of a recovering alcohol addict. 

It is exactly what Dan wanted. It is everything he wished for and dreamed of. He has never been more proud of and at peace with Mum and he has never felt more miserable and lonely and chaotic.

Dan feels okay during the days, for those two weeks, but at night it switches. Dan feels detached and scared and all of a sudden, memories of emergencies from the past few years flash in his brain before he can stop them from coming. He feels every single thing he did when they happened. These memories and feelings have attached to him and they won’t leave. He feels Mum’s hands on him as he tried to stop her from driving away under the influence. He sees visions of Mum at the end of the bed, slurring and cross eyed. He hears the anger in Dad’s voice. The urgent calls when Mum was especially bad. It is settled into Dan’s bones, obscuring his perception of what happened and when and why and what ‘now’ even is, now that they are, supposedly, on the other side of those horrors.

Susanne calls it a response to trauma. She tells him that it is normal to feel unsure of your relationships, and to find it difficult to trust people, and to somehow try to seek out situations and relationships that are similar to those you’ve gone through before because that is what you’ve grown familiar with. She tells him that there are ways to get ahold of it all, and to keep it from affecting your day to day. They have been working at it, and some of it has made it better, but one fact remains:

Dan has no idea who he is in his family if he isn’t a soldier.

Mum tells him that he gets to be her son now, but Dan doesn’t know what it means to be a son.

Dan returns to the present, on a Friday in September in the hallway with his mum that should just be Mum but isn’t. She strokes his hair and takes a step back and smiles at him. Dan has to start getting used to the fact that she keeps eye contact nowadays. It has been two years. It shouldn't be this hard, still, to look her in the eyes.

The amber lights go red in this house. They flash and they flash and they flash.

Dan has to survive that until he gets to go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Exogenesis: Symphony Pt. 2 (Cross-Pollination) by Muse  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	28. Chapter 28

**III** | Redemption _(present)_

Grandma and Grandpa think that Dan works a full time job. Dan’s brother Adrian thinks that Dan dropped out and moved back home because of his mental health issues, more so than anything that had to do with Mum. Dad talks in a booming voice with a grand smile on his face. He gets everyone’s attention around the table as he talks about what Adrian has been doing abroad and all of the wonderful things he has achieved now that he has graduated from university.

Dan thinks about the hours ticking by and wonders, idly, if he might make it back home in time for the stream if he gets out of this early.

They all just sit there in the same living room as the one where Mum used to drink the pain away. It doesn’t look as worn down and miserable now. The walls have been repainted and they have changed the flooring and there is art on the walls that Mum painted. It is a hobby she picked up at rehab, and every time Dan visits the paintings get more vivid. Mum’s subject of choice is flowers. She doesn’t really paint anything else. Some of the paintings show an entire field full of them and there are some that only displays one, in a vase.

It looks different, but Dan can still smell Mum’s wine breath, just as a passing memory, as he sits and waits for a good moment to be able to slip away unnoticed.

He can’t stand looking at this. Everyone looks dressed up and adult and mature. Grandma compliments Mum on her paintings and she accepts the compliment with no issue. She talks about what she is working on currently. She mentions the fact that she might do an art display in the near future. Dan knows what thoughts not to think when he is here but they still arrive. It is a petty, childish voice that asks why it couldn’t have been like this when he was young. It asks why Mum didn’t look at him then the way that she looks at him now.

“I like this,” Mum says as she feels the material of his shirt.

It is just a black button up. Dan feels himself smile anyway.

“Yeah, thanks,” he says. It feels like talking to a stranger. “I like your dress.”

It is a white conservative dress that suits her perfectly. 

Mum looks up at him. Finally, he sees something in her eyes that he can recognise.

Remorse. She looks at him like he is an opportunity he missed. It isn’t much different from how Dan feels. Like they completely passed each other in life. Mum was ill and then Dan was ill and they never met in the middle. They have some opportunity to do so now but the past has made things complicated.

A lot of the time, Dan’s memories paint Mum with devil’s horns, as a person with the intention of hurting other people. In some ways, that makes it easier for him to handle thinking about it. If she was a bad person, then that would be it. He wouldn’t feel that need to make amends. He wouldn’t feel the pain in knowing how hard it is to do that, when every time they meet ends with him flashing back and reliving a past that he wants to forget.

So they stand in the same living room they were in when Dan shouted at her, and pleaded to her, and listened to her chatter on about things when she was drunk and they both pretended that she wasn’t, and they don’t say a word about it.

The day turns into evening and cake that gets finished and it starts to feel less constricting. Grandma and Mum are chatting on the sofa and Dad and Adrian are looking at something on Adrian’s phone and Grandpa is asleep in the armchair with Colin on his lap. Dan has an estranged, complex relationship with every single person in this room and it is apparent in how everyone so naturally ignores him.

Dan could leave now. It is six o’clock. He could make the stream.

Dan walks upstairs and goes to his old bedroom. It no longer has piss yellow walls. All of Dan’s things have been removed except for the bed and a few old stuffed animals. Now there is an easel standing next to the window and shelves full of art supplies on the walls and several incomplete paintings of flowers drying in a wooden rack..

The bed squeaks as Dan sits down on top of it. The piss yellow is now white. Dan wonders if Mum plans to paint anything else over it, and if they are allowed to do that.

As Dan looks around the room and breathes slow breaths, he feels something hard beneath the palm of his hand on the mattress. He feels around. It is like a small rock, with sharp edges. Dan slips his hand under the duvet and takes it in hand, curious to look.

It is a purple, translucent rock that is supposed to look like an amethyst. On the flat underside, the letters FW are ingrained. Dan remembers making the online purchase. He was sure he had thrown it away among most of his personal possessions when he moved to London. He just doesn’t like _stuff_. Whether that is merch for his favourite video game or a notebook from the third grade, it doesn’t make a difference. It is useless crap.

Dan feels the amethyst and thinks about how he used to imagine that it provided him with some strength to get through the hard times. It didn’t work, per se. Dan’s belief in it made it work a little bit, though. It made him feel like wasn’t as alone in everything that was happening.

Dan puts it in his pocket and tells himself it isn’t a sentimental item. He doesn’t even really want to look at it. It should just be in his pocket again, like it used to be before.

Three tentative knocks on the door.

He can tell that it’s Mum just from the sound. He wonders why she would think to knock. It isn’t his room anymore.

“Come in,” Dan says, because Mum actually waits for him to.

The moment she closes the door behind herself Dan’s defenses drop. The longing he feels, like a constant ache nagging inside his chest, hits him tenfold as she walks closer and caresses his cheek. 

“It’s a bit much, this, isn’t it?” she asks.

Dan nods against the palm of her hand and wishes he was small again, small enough to feel held by this touch. His mouth goes tight as the longing swells inside his chest. He doesn’t usually feel things like this, here. Mum sits down next to him and Dan manages a neutral expression.

“Were you meant to be doing something else tonight?” Mum says.

These are things she notices, now. Dan nods, again.

“What was it? Was it important?”

Dan shakes his head on instinct. He isn’t allowed to find anything more important than family, when he is here. That is the whole reason he spent years cleaning up messes, wasn’t it?

“I think it was,” Mum says.

They share a look.

Dan scoots down, and Mum matches his movements until she is lying down and he rests his head on her hip and she plays with his hair, fingers moving up and down to wisp across his cheek in a familiar pattern. They end up like this almost every time he sees her. Dan feels just as pathetic, every time. He doesn’t feel strong like he should be after everything he went through. He came out the other side of that hell a weaker person than he ever had been before.

So he asks for comfort from the very person that hurt him. She gives it to him. Dan feels an intense urge to cry.

“How are you doing, really, bear?” Mum asks.

“I’m alright,” Dan says. “How are you?”

Mum chuckles.

“You don’t have to do that,” she says. “I’m genuinely asking.”

That’s what Mum does now. Genuine things.

“I miss you,” Mum says.

“I miss you, too,” Dan whispers.

It comes out of him so quickly with such an earnest tone that Mum’s hand stops, briefly, stalling in surprise. The shift in movement is all it takes for a tear to roll down Dan’s cheek.

Mum picks up her pattern and wipes it away in effect. She doesn’t say another word. Dan is grateful for it.

-

When Dan and Mum return downstairs, Grandma and Grandpa are on their way to leave. Dan lets Grandma hug him and he lets Grandpa shake his hand for a second before he gets pulled into a hug from him, too. Mum and Grandma starts chatting in the hallway, and knowing them that could take a while despite goodbyes being exchanged.

Adrian walks upstairs. He is going to sleep in Dan’s old room. The art room. Or whatever it is that they really call it, now. Dan hasn’t really got a full, comprehensive picture of their lives and rituals when he only visits a few times a year. Dan does comprehend the look on Dad’s face from where he is sat by the dining table in the living room, though. It asks him to come sit while everyone else is distracted. Dan doesn’t know how old he will have to get before he stops feeling obligated to do as he is told. For now, he isn’t old enough. If it even has to do with age.

Dad sighs. Dan knows that sigh.

It isn’t directed at Dan. He isn’t upset with him. Dan did exactly what he wanted, and for that he is rewarded by not being yelled at, and hearing tired sighs that have to do with Mum. Even after all these years and the recovery she has gone through, Dad has those to spare. Dan is the one that gets to hear them, because Dan was there when it got to its worst point. Dan is the person Dad has to confide in.

Mum thinks that Dan gets to be a son, now. She doesn’t know that Dad still doesn’t treat him like one.

Dan listens for a bit while Dad talks about things like Mum getting too wrapped up in her hobbies and not being able to get a full time job. He talks about when she feels low and how hard that is on him. Dan has heard it all before. Mum isn’t perfect just because she has recovered, and Dad doesn’t understand that he can’t do anything about that. Dan is astounded that Dad wants to ask for more. Mum could do less overspending, that much he understands, but it is at least more manageable than her previous vices.

Dan hates that he still listens, and nods, and offers comfort. He hates that Dad doesn’t see the boundary between what he should be telling him and what he shouldn’t. Dan has access to everything and Adrian doesn’t have to listen to a single word. Adrian is the one they’ve been getting dressed up and acted polite for, even during the worst times. He is the one that gets the good version of this family. His feelings are always prioritised. His feelings are always spared.

The worst part is that when Dan comes here, he gets pulled right back into it. He wants to help. He wants to listen. He wants to do what he can to make things better. He could talk to Mum about what Dad said. He could try to find if there is a way to make things easier between them. Dan gets an urge to just stay here for a while, and play the part he knows how to best play.

He has no clue how to be a twenty seven year old guy in London, supposed to view the world as his oyster and sleep around or date and party with friends and settle down and find a steady, full time job. Dan doesn’t see himself as that, at all. He feels like a neglected child. He feels pathetic, endlessly searching and pining for love and affection and not trusting any of it once he is subjected to it, because in his house love was earned through favours. It wasn’t something that simply existed.

On the other hand, Dan has made their lives harder too. They pay some of his rent. They housed him for those years. They had to get him to go to the doctor to talk about his mental health issues. They had to deal with a sullen, angry, quiet teenage boy that flinched upon any touch and lashed out in a, in their opinion, unfounded rage. Some part of Dan wants to be sad that they never asked him why he was upset in those moments. He wonders why they would rather paint their son as an ungrateful, angry person instead of trying to approach him. But then, Dan isn’t approachable, in that way. He never was. It must be hard to live with a person like that. In fact, Dan knows intimately just how hard it is.

It is no wonder he keeps hurting the people that try to get close. He was wrong by default. Dan never wanted to be what Mum was, or what Dad was. He never wanted to be closed off or angry, putting the blame on everyone else. 

It doesn’t matter what he wants. The more time goes on, the more shades of Mum and Dad’s worst traits grow apparent in his reflection.

Dan is missing the stream. It is eleven o’clock in the evening, and the train leaves in ten minutes.

He says goodbye to Mum before he gets out of the car. She takes his hand, momentarily, and looks into his eyes. There is pleading there. There is remorse. Dan isn’t worthy of it. What exists, inside of him, that she could possibly want? Apart from her finding some inner peace in knowing that the past didn’t completely ruin her son, Dan has nothing to offer her. He didn’t have it before the worst of it started happening. He has even less, after.

He wishes he could give her something. Anything.

What he gives her, is a small squeeze of her hand and a promise to come visit soon. She doesn’t believe it. Dan hardly believes it. But they smile hopefully at one another and then Dan is out of the car and Mum is driving away.

Dan already misses her. He already worries. He hopes that she gets to do that art display. He hopes that Dad goes easy on her.

Dan feels his pocket. The stone is still there. It is reassuring, but it isn’t enough.

Nothing is enough. Mum being better isn’t enough. Seagull’s approval isn’t enough. Dan’s small, manageable little life isn’t enough. Dan still spirals. He is edging too close to the darkness he once promised would take all of him. The cave is so cold.

Is he not at a stage in his life where it would be alright, if he went?

The people around him are content. He doesn’t have any unfinished business. He has no more reason to stall.

So why does it burn inside his chest, on the train back home, when he thinks of the possibility of finally ending it? It used to comfort him. Dan feels like he is about to be sick. He breathes in and out slowly, urging himself to at least not let show the chaos to the other passengers. It works, but the chaos doesn’t stop. Dan floats outside of his body and the spectator stares at him silently.

Dan wishes it would speak. 

Morgan, Jamie, Mason and Sam are hyping each other up in the group chat. Dan simply watches the flow of conversation. The gifs and the pictures and the caps locked sentences that shouldn’t make sense but do, because in that world it is so easy to understand other people. It is so easy to connect. Real life doesn’t have to be real. All you get to do is offer excitement and comfort and creative things like fics and art but once you get off the computer or close down the app, your life remains the same.

Dan could make some of the stream. He could hurry to his flat and engage and watch as everyone else finally finds out about Caves and Gardens. He could enjoy that.

The idea of going to the place he knows will stop any hope for reconciliation with Mum kills his spirit. Once he gets in that bed, it is over. He will flash back and he will paint his Mum as a monster and feel the guilt eat him up inside.

Dan gets off the train at half twelve. He could make the stream.

But Dan stays on the tube as it passes his stop and instead he gets off two stops later. He walks up the escalator in the Underground. His heart is not pounding, for once. He is going to make a mistake and he doesn’t care. He just needs this.

Dan stops outside Jimmy’s building and takes a steadying breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Exogenesis: Symphony pt.3 (Redemption) by Muse  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	29. Chapter 29

Dan is stalling.

He could press the buzzer right now and fall into Jimmy’s bed. He could forget the hurt and come so hard he falls asleep without a single thought occupying his mind. If Jimmy will still have him, that is. He could just as well say no. He is different from Dan, after all. Unlike him, Jimmy doesn’t repeat mistakes like this.

No mistake has been made yet, Dan reminds himself. The streets are lonesome and dark despite Friday night. The street lights flicker over cobblestone paths, crisscrossing all the way over the city. The colours remind Dan of the cave. Amber, flashing. He imagines them turning to red.

Dan’s thumb hovers over the buzzer, and just as he is about to make the mistake, a sound stops him. Someone is running down the stairs inside. Dan can see the shadow of a person coming closer through the dim window. He feels himself freeze. He can’t do this. He has to leave. Jimmy doesn’t deserve to be an outlet for Dan’s problems. Dan can’t stand the thought of any more of the dull shades of Mum and Dad colouring in his achromatic shape. He can’t stand the thought of wiping the colours off of someone else’s canvas like they erased his.

The front door swings open and Dan turns and walks. He can’t even tell which direction he is going in. All he knows is that he needs to walk away and fast because he doesn’t want to look at another person’s face. He shoves his hands in his jeans pockets and clutches the amethyst in his fist until it hurts.

Then someone calls his name.

Dan freezes, again.

“Dan?” repeats the person behind him.

He hears the footsteps approaching faster. Dan can’t move.

The person puts their hand on Dan’s shoulder and turns him around. Dan isn’t sure how Chris can tell, but the moment their eyes meet Chris’s eyes almost spill over with concern. This is why Dan can’t stand looking at another person’s face right now. Especially not the face of a loose acquaintance, that seems to grow more worried the longer Dan stays quiet.

Dan is usually good at deflecting. He can talk himself out of things.

At the moment, Dan can’t speak. He knows he has vocal chords and he knows they can make sounds, but his brain isn’t connecting to them. It might as well be like that. Not much good comes from Dan’s words, anyway.

“You alright?” Chris asks. “What are you doing ‘round here?”

Dan still can’t speak. He shakes his head and looks down at his feet.

He has to say something.

“I don’t know,” is what Dan finally says once he is able to.

His voice is wobbly and pathetic. Chris’s hand returns to his shoulder and it doesn’t move when Dan flinches. Dan can’t tell what it is about this moment, but their usual dynamic of semi awkward friend-of-a-friend is not present in it. Chris looks so serious and Dan feels so small.

He can’t afford to be small.

“Were you going to see Jimmy?”

Chris’s voice is quieter now. Conspiratory. Dan shakes his head.

“I-”

“I thought that was over?”

He says it like he knows they had a proper thing going. All of the little pieces of facts and people fall out of place in Dan’s mind. It is struggling hard enough as it is to keep him standing upright, let alone trying to somehow deal with being caught red handed repeating the same mistake.

“It is,” Dan says sternly.

Chris’s hand falls from his shoulder and gives a weak smile.

“Sorry,” Dan says. “It is over. I’m fine.”

Dan glances up at Jimmy’s window. The curtains are drawn just like they were on the day they reunited. It meant so much to him, on that day. The cracks in the wall and the blinds pulled down. Tonight, it just looks like a window with closed blinds. Dan feels it physically, just how much he would rather have that sort of ache consume him.

When he looks back at Chris, he realises how inappropriate that is. Dan thinks for a moment before he comes up with a convincing lie. He needs a lie. Any lie. Anything that makes Chris stop looking at him as who he really is.

“I just got off work and wanted to take a walk,” Dan ends up saying. “I don’t know if that was the best idea. I’m practically sleep walking.”

He huffs a fake laugh at his own poor attempt at a joke. Chris does laugh, though. Maybe out of politeness, but at least it is something other than the crushing feeling of having an almost stranger catch you in your weakest moment.

“You could sleep at mine if you’d like,” Chris says. “Beats taking the tube.”

Dan wiggles his eyebrows. Now that he is committing to acting normal it comes almost naturally. The spectator cringes, but Chris laughs and wiggles his eyebrows back.

“But seriously,” Chris says. “No one’s home tonight, anyway. You could sleep in Phil’s bed.”

The weak hold Dan has of his unwelcome emotions trembles a bit upon hearing Phil’s name. He should be going home. He shouldn’t have come here in the first place.

But home means going to sleep on the mattress that has soaked up all of his trauma. It is patiently waiting to swallow him whole.

“Don’t make that face,” Chris says. “Phil isn’t a typical gross boy.”

A twitch of a real smile plays in the corner of Dan’s mouth. He stifles it.

“I know,” he says. “Alright.”

“Yeah?”

Chris looks so relieved that Dan thinks he might not have been successful in deflecting from what he is obviously doing outside of Jimmy’s building in the middle of the night.

“Yeah,” Dan shrugs. “Sure. Thanks.”

They walk side by side along the flashing amber streets and Dan wonders why so many kind people keep stumbling into his life. He hasn’t earned any of them.

-

There are dishes in the sink and socks strewn about the floor and empty pizza boxes on the kitchen island. The flat looks lived in. The furniture don’t exactly match in colour or shape, but something about the consistency in that inconsistency makes it work. Dan has been here twice and now is the first time he finds himself really looking at the place. It is so different from Dan’s flat. It doesn’t look like a doctor’s office feels. Stale and dull and clinical. There is colour and mess. As Dan steps inside the living room, something about it reminds him of Mum.

With all of her colourful flower paintings and painted eyelids and remorseful eyes that Dan can’t forgive.

Dan steadies himself against the back of the sofa as his head swims and his chest tightens.

“Dan?” Chris asks.

His hand is back on his shoulder. If Dan wasn’t currently trying to stop himself from shaking he might have leaned into that touch. He might have turned and grabbed Chris by the back of the head and treated him like a temporary solution to dull the ache drumming up inside of him with alarming velocity. It isn’t supposed to follow him here. It should be at home, in his bed.

Apparently, Dan just can’t fucking escape.

“You’re shaking,” Chris says.

His voice sounds far off and distorted, like he is saying it into a tin can. It reminds Dan of another night in another flat when his body shook as it rejected the love Jimmy so desperately wanted to give him. That, in turn, reminds him of the look in Mum’s eyes when they said goodbye in the car only a few hours ago. So much love that could be his, but Dan can’t feel it. He can’t return it. His life is an emotionless waste.

This is Chris, though. A guy he hardly knows, and who has not asked to see him fall apart.

Dan stands straight and offers Chris a weak smile.

“I’m tired,” he says.

His bones ache when he considers how awfully true that is. His energy was drained the moment he saw Dad’s missed calls on Wednesday. He has been able to keep going because of some strange desire to please. It never actually escapes him, that. He just needs to serve and serve and serve and act as that soldier. But the war is over. His armour is rusting. He is fighting a cause that he already lost because while Mum is better, nothing else is. 

“I get like that, too, sometimes,” Chris offers.

“Like what?” Dan asks.

Chris squeezes his shoulder before pulling his hand back. He circles the sofa and sits down, patting the seat next to him as an invitation.

“Tired,” he says with a subtext that Dan can’t pretend isn’t there.

Dan sits down next to him and sighs. He leans forward restlessly, elbows on his knees and hands running up through his hair. He isn’t sure what kind of a conversation Chris is about to attempt, but Dan isn’t sure he has it in him to entertain some sort of pow wow with a person he hardly knows.

But this isn’t his mattress. He is still above the surface. He is still breathing. This isn’t like being touched and pretending that having his dick sucked is the same thing as love. It isn’t the same as letting his brain be wrapped up in Jimmy, but at least it isn’t what he knows is coming. As long as he sits here, he can put it up a bit more.

“Did Jimmy tell you what I was doing before I came to London?” Chris asks.

“No,” Dan says.

He leans back and looks at Chris next to him. There is only one lamp on in the corner of the room, and though the harsh shadows crossing over his face exaggerates the jut of his brow, Dan thinks he is seeing something more serious take place next to him than what he usually expects from Chris.

Chris pushes away his fringe and shrugs. He huffs out some nerves. He glances at Dan, then looks back down quickly.

“Y’know, therapy, depression, living in my mum’s house,” Chris says. “Just what any successful thirty something gets up to in the prime of his life.”

Dan touches Chris’s knee before he thinks about it. He looks at his face and holds eye contact. The frown on Chris’s face smooths out into something calmer.

“Who’s to say what’s successful?” Dan asks.

Chris regards him silently.

“Coming out of that place and actually going to London,” Dan elaborates. “Pursuing acting. Isn’t that successful, after something like that?”

Dan takes away his hand from on top of Chris’s knee and lets him twist uncomfortably. Dan is probably being too intense, but this is a war for the soldier to fight. A person to protect. It feels very important, suddenly, that Chris understands that he is doing well for himself.

“It seems so small, though,” Chris says. “I don’t want to congratulate myself on something that everyone else got the hang of when they were twenty.”

Dan lets out a small laugh. Chris’s eyes light up immediately. It almost hurts to see how happy that little laugh makes him. He doesn’t ask for much, Chris.

“Well, you should,” Dan says with a conviction he doesn’t extend to himself. “It takes more to do that than anyone gets credit for.”

“I guess you’re right,” Chris says.

Silence stretches between them.

“Phil told me you guys know each other from your job,” Chris says. “He goes to therapy there.”

“Yeah,” Dan half says, half asks.

“I think it’s nice,” Chris shrugs, “to see him be successful while needing that kind of help.”

For a second, Dan feels an intense urge for Phil to appear in this room. In this brief, intense moment, Dan misses him so much it hurts.

He isn’t sure what he misses. Phil is an experience that Dan hasn’t even begun to try and wrap his head around.

“I think so too,” Dan offers.

Chris looks at him.

“I go to therapy, too,” Dan says. “Well, on and off. Currently off. Clearly.”

He gestures at nothing with a chuckle. As if the reason for this strange conversation with a friend of a friend in a flat Dan has only been to twice before is something they can see or touch or hear.

Chris chuckles too. Perhaps that reason is actually something Chris can see and touch and hear, too.

“It’s nice to see you be successful, Dan,” Chris says. “While dealing with all of that.”

Dan sucks in a sharp breath, exhaled in a laugh to deflect from the feeling Chris’s words erupted inside of his chest. He feels bad that Chris sounds that genuine. That he actually believes those words enough to say them, even if they are vulnerable.

Dan is just an animal inside a cage, trying his best to make something out of the small space he is contained within. He doesn’t do it well. He falls apart all the time. Chris deserves a better person to look up to. Dan smiles to himself when he realises that, in fact, he does. He has Phil.

“I should go to sleep,” Dan says.

Chris looks at him for a moment.

“Are you okay?”

There is so much he can say to answer that question. Dan doesn’t have time to think about all of it before he answers.

“Yup,” he says.

Chris looks like he knows something. Dan gets up.

“Hey, Dan.”

“Yeah?”

He looks back at him before he walks into Phil’s bedroom.

“Thank you.”

Dan huffs.

“No problem,” he says. “Thanks for letting me stay here.” 

Chris looks so alone on the sofa and Dan feels bad for leaving him. He wonders if what he said was wrong in some way. If Chris took offense to his optimism.

Optimism. Dan wants to shake his head at himself. That’s what Dye used to call his approach, too.

Dan sighs and weighs on his feet before finally deciding to go to bed. He looks over at the sofa.

“Good night, Chris.”

Chris doesn’t smile. He has this secret expression that Dan can’t interpret in the dark. It makes his heart sink. Chris tilts his head to the side.

“Good night, Dan.”

-

Dan wakes up in the middle of the night. His belt is digging into his hip. Why the fuck is he sleeping with jeans on?

As Dan quickly unbuckles his belt and pulls the jeans off he catches a whiff of something.

Citrus and honey.

He looks around. The jeans fall to the carpeted floor with a soft noise. In the blue tinted darkness, Dan makes out shadows against the walls. They are of house plants and an impressive PC and countless books. The more Dan’s eyes adjust to the dark, the more little things he is able to make out. Knick knacks cover every surface in a haphazard manner that looks cosy rather than messy. There are pictures on one wall, framed posters for films Dan has never heard of.

Dan never really took Phil for the house plant caring sort of guy. In his half asleep state, that reminds him of Dye. It doesn’t take much before Dan’s heart starts beating so fast and hard that it is painful. He doesn’t need to think the full thought before the sensations develop, now. They are right next to him at all times, ready to capture him at any flimmer of thought brushing over the uncomfortable.

He is reminded of broken family and hurting relationships and every way in which his life is confusing and chaotic and crushing long past when it is supposed to feel that way, given the progression of events.

But this pillow smells like citrus and honey.

Dan hugs it close and buries his nose in it. The painful pounding in his heart slows while he imagines blue, urgent eyes that are in full control and nervous twitchy hands and a gentle tone that Dan has only ever heard Phil use when talking to him.

For a moment, he misses Phil so badly. But then, he doesn’t even know who it is he is missing. He doesn’t know shit.

But he falls asleep. He doesn’t wallow, for now.

-

“Sleep okay?”

Dan would rather not be wearing jeans again this soon. He wants to be in his pants and a hoodie under his duvet. For a moment, the idea of his flat as _home_ seems accurate, especially while he is making awkward conversation with a friend of a friend the moment he exits Phil’s bedroom.

Chris is right where Dan left him last night. If it wasn’t for the bed head and the pyjama bottoms and t-shirt, he would have thought Chris hadn’t moved an inch.

“Yeah,” Dan says. He feels glued to the spot, right outside the door. “Uh. Thanks.”

The things they talked about last night are far off. Right now, Chris is definitely just that person in the background that Dan has only met a few times. He wills himself not to think of who Chris was in the background of, but then Dan thinks he can still smell citrus and honey. Perhaps it lingered in his clothes.

“Are you..?” Chris gestures something.

Dan nods stiffly, taking an awkward step forward.

“Yeah,” he answers. “I’m gonna go. I have to..”

He can’t think of anything. It is too bloody early for that and suddenly Chris looks too fucking pitiful and understanding.

“Are you sure you have to go?” Chris asks.

Dan has to take his meds. He is sure.

“I could ask Jimmy to come ‘round and we could all hang out,” Chris says. “Could be a bit of fun.”

He says it casually, but to Dan every word sounds like it means something more. Something that Dan isn’t willing to think about right now.

“Sorry,” Dan says, and he almost feels it. “I have… stuff.”

There is a distance between them. Awkward, stilted, like they both have things to say with no clue as to how to say them because they don’t know each other like that. Dan thinks briefly that Chris is a better person than he thought he was. He opened his home to him because he could tell something was up. He didn’t act judging. He just talked to him.

Dan should repay him. But not right now.

“Alright,” Chris concedes. “See you around?”

“Yeah,” Dan nods. He takes another step, this time towards the hallway.

“You can come any time,” Chris says. “Whenever you’re done with your… stuff.”

Dan’s glass heart is a pile of ash.

It is too much for eight o’clock on a Saturday morning.

Thankfully, Chris doesn’t linger in the moment for too long. He gets up and he stands in the hallway as Dan puts on his jacket and shoes. He doesn’t hug him goodbye. His eyes are big and round and pained in a way that Dan can’t really understand.

Dan passes Jimmy’s building and it hurts. Every step closer to the tube is more agony. The closer he gets to his flat, the more he sheds the face he puts on and thus everything else starts to arrive in rapid pace. 

Dan walks faster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Someone by Drew Monson  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)
> 
> Hi! I am chiming in once more to say thank you all for the amazing response to this fic.  
> This week @dnovep on twitter made their own playlist for Monochrome, complete with a Fall Whisperer cover of Dye and White. The songs were chosen so thoughtfully and I love the art ;_; So I wanted to say thank you thank you thank you to Nov for making it, I appreciate it a lot!!   
> [**[Click here to listen to Nov's playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/78FLy1yND3RwygLcD264h2)


	30. Chapter 30

The flat is quiet.

Despite the constant noise of cars and sirens from outside, Dan can’t make out any sounds. His head is empty. The last few days have been so loud. They were everything, all at once. Dan should be thankful for the quiet now that it has arrived, but he can’t sleep. He can’t rest. Beneath the duvet in his flat, free from responsibilities, he feels on edge. As if there is a storm approaching.

The stream went well. The reaction has been split, just like Dan suspected. His friends have tried to reach him countless times. They ask if he knew.

Everything happens too fast online. Whenever Dan looks at the Twitter app he feels dizzy, like all the tweets is just the stream of consciousness of a million other people that he has no energy to carry right now. 

Mum’s consciousness is heavy enough, though it isn’t really her’s. It is a skewed version that attached itself to him. It doesn’t speak, but Dan feels its presence. 

The Shadow Realm isn’t a choice. It is inevitable. Dan and Dye and White never wanted it. It is like a sudden detour from the straight path, a change of direction. The wheel is out of your hands. It keeps spinning and spinning and spinning and all you can really do is hold on to your seat for all that you’re worth. Dan didn’t know when it would end. In Fall Whisperer, you gain that control after you first visit the other realm. When you finally begin to work towards what you are supposed to, and try to match your shadow rather than run from it. 

In real life, Dan gained control of the wheel when he moved to London. It went slowly. His hands were hesitant when they finally wrapped around it and turned back to the straight path. Only, when Dan got there, he didn’t recognise it at all.

The ambitions he had before the control was taken from him were no longer there, and if they were, they were hidden. It didn’t make him feel less lost than he had before. He was still driving in the dark, now keenly aware that the control wasn’t his. He couldn’t know how long it would take before he was apprehended again. He didn’t know when the wheel would spin out of control. The mere awareness of that caused him to move at a slower pace. It might have put up the next round for a bit longer, but regardless, the wheel started to spin again.

The wheel is spinning now, but it isn’t loud. It isn’t dramatic. He doesn’t feel like sobbing on the floor.

He only feels inclined to do so when he is still holding on. When he is trying his hardest to keep to the path despite the wheels squealing against the pavement. 

No, Dan has let go of the wheel for the time being. It almost feels serene.

The crash comes when he clutches the wheel yet again. Because defying the mental bonds is what causes it. Dan wonders whether it is worth it if that is what control feels like. Utter chaos, everything working against you, a past that won’t shut up and a future that looks bleaker the further he walks in its direction.

He ends up responding to Morgan. He tells her that he found out a few days ago. He tells her that he couldn’t be there because of his family. He tells her that he is happy, and that he wants to celebrate the next time they are both able to come online at the same time. Dan hasn’t looked at any footage from the stream apart from a few clips circulating online. Funny moments when Seagull was trolling as usual, some fun glitches, and the reveal.

He knows that he is feeling something, somewhere on the other side of the dissociation. He doesn’t dare to reach for it, even if it is positive.

Dan is restless and he isn’t restless. He feels fucking hopeless.

It never stops.

He doesn’t think it can, anyway. All of his attempts have been a lost cause. He is left alone inside the chaos until he has to check out, mentally.

Dan sits up in bed and looks at the brick wall on the other side of the window. Golden sunlight, covered by lines of sharp black shadows. He forgets if it is still Saturday, or if Sunday already arrived. He slept, didn’t he?

Dan lies down in bed and pulls the covers over himself. It doesn’t exactly matter. He could sleep his whole fucking life away and it wouldn’t make a difference as long as he shows up for work or visits his family every once in a while. In a strange way, the thought of that is comforting. In another, it is devastating.

Dan hears a rumble beneath the quiet. It doesn’t take more than that to make him cry.

-

In some ways, it feels purely physical.

Like he has taken sleep medication that doesn’t let him fall asleep but keeps him tired enough to hate being awake. Every movement becomes an effort. Every little interaction makes him want to cry. But he can’t even _fully_ cry. Sometimes the tears simply fall from his eyes and they are completely useless.

Time has passed and things have changed, but Dan is stagnant in his reactions to his family.

He was made to think that every little opinion he had was wrong, back then. He was made to sound insane for ever making any space for his own emotions. All they wanted was to cram theirs down his throat and they expected him to swallow the load without a flinch. Anything he spewed back up was for him to deal with, alone. Alone and afraid and crying in his bedroom, because if Dan feels anything he feels it too much and the way he feels things inconveniences other people.

Now, he knows that his thoughts and emotions are illogical. Because Mum is better. He doesn’t have to act like a soldier. He doesn’t have to come to the rescue. Nothing happens. He isn’t needed. So that makes them right. They were right all along. His emotions were too much. His emotions were inconvenient. It makes him sick to his stomach.

Dan’s achromatism is getting filled in and it’s in the colours of Mum’s most awfully dreary tone.

There is nothing he can do in this state. He can only wait it out. Wait it out and wait it out and wait it out and hope that this is the last time. Hope that he doesn’t wake up from it an even worse person than he did last.

-

This type of loneliness aches.

It isn’t one that a quick fuck could soothe, even though that is something Dan resorts to more often than he would like to admit to. It isn’t soothed by conversation, or divulging everything that is currently trapped inside his head. This type of loneliness can only be wiped away by another person that was there when the worst happened, who was on Dan’s side of things. But that person doesn’t exist.

Dan thinks of Dye and White. He thinks of purple and green. He thinks of amethysts and emeralds. He imagines their theme, the song that reaches into his chest and super glues his glass heart together. It doesn’t last, but, for a moment, it isn’t broken.

Throughout his life, Dan has told himself to stop relying on things that don’t exist. The more time goes on, the less he sticks to that rule. He can’t rely on anything else. His way of creating and holding on to real relationships doesn’t work. He goes too far and he ends up hurting everyone, including himself. At least he can’t hurt people that don’t exist. But that’s the thing. They don’t exist.

Lucy does text him. Dan responds, half heartedly. He is grateful for her. He admires the way she actually forgave him for everything, even if he doesn’t believe that he deserves it. It is still difficult, though, to consider going downstairs to hang out. It is difficult to consider picking up the phone and ringing Jimmy, to get them past the strange place ending whatever they had before put them in.

Thinking about them, and the idea of being an active part of their lives, makes Dan feel like a terrible person.

It reminds him of the fucked up things he has done. It reminds him of how selfish he is. It reminds him of how incredibly fucking weak he is, when everything he has gone through would suggest he would go in the opposite direction. 

It shouldn’t be that hard. Don’t hurt other people. Don’t wish for what you can’t have. Keep to the road you were going and stop letting the wheel slip out of your hands.

Sitting next to Haley on the floor of his flat doesn’t make him feel like a terrible person. Her long, brown hair is out of its ponytail and her eyes are lined in black. There is something about coming back from Wokingham for her, too. She starts dressing more like she used to. Dan doesn’t feel like he is a bad person listening to her talk about how fucked up her mum is and how she can’t spend a weekend at home without several arguments.

Dan should count himself lucky. In a way, he does.

He doesn’t feel lucky knowing what will arrive once Haley leaves. Once the stories are exchanged and the food containers are empty, used up and becoming litter. It isn’t unlike what Dan feels he is, now. He served his purpose. Now he is the garbage, littering people’s lives.

“How was Adrian’s birthday?” Haley asks. “How old is he now, twenty one?”

Dan nods.

“Twenty one, yeah,” he says.

“That’s crazy,” Haley laughs.

Dan offers a smile in return. He doesn’t dwell on things like that like Haley does.

“Who allowed him to age?” Dan jokes.

Haley shakes her head with a giggle that only lasts for a couple moments before her expression turns serious.

“And your mum?”

She asks this with more caution. She tilts her head. Haley is usually averse to eye contact, but at the moment her green eyes insist on locking with Dan’s, as if she wants to see what is behind them.

Dan’s expression is blank. There is nothing behind his eyes.

“She’s good,” Dan says. “She paints. She’s doing really well. Incredible, actually.”

He doesn’t know how pain slips through his voice when he says such positive things, but he hears it. The monotone crackles and something real is communicated between the lines. For once, Haley picks up on it.

“Have you thought about picking up a hobby?” she asks.

Dan frowns.

“What?” he says.

Haley shrugs.

“Just to…,” she gestures uselessly. “Get your mind off stuff.”

In some tiny way, Haley gets it. Dan smiles weakly. He does have a hobby to get his mind off stuff. Haley doesn’t really know much about that except for the fact that it makes him sit by the computer a lot, though.

“Maybe,” Dan says.

“How is therapy going?”

Dan wills himself to not feel interrogated. Haley has a hard time reeling herself back once she gets going.

“I haven’t been in a while.”

Haley puts a hand on his knee. A quick touch before she pulls away. It’s too brief to make any impact.

“You should go back,” she says.

“It’s not like you go to therapy,” Dan grins.

Haley shrugs.

“I’m a lost cause,” she says.

“You’re not,” Dan insists.

Haley rolls her eyes.

“Honest,” Dan says. “You’re doing better than me, aren’t you? You have a full time job and you are dating normal people and you somehow keep it together despite your mum treating you like shit.”

Haley stays quiet.

“I’m the lost cause, if anyone,” Dan huffs. He feels strongly about communicating this, at the moment. “My mum is good and everything is like I want it, yeah? I live in London even if I work a part time fucking job. And I’m still just as much of a fucking miserable piece of shit loser as I was in Wokingham.”

It feels good to say it. Something is lifted from his chest for a moment before he looks at Haley’s face. She _nods_.

“You’re not a loser,” she says, weakly.

It is only at times like these that Dan really remembers why he doesn’t usually share things like this with Haley, or anyone. Somewhere deep in her heart, Haley agrees with him. She resents him for having a family that is better put together than hers is. When Dan tries to make eye contact this time, Haley looks away. She has the upper hand like that.

It isn’t that he wants Haley to disagree with him. But the fact that she barely takes in what he says and doesn’t offer anything other than that to at least be polite really brings it home. It’s just true. There is nothing more to it.

“I could try therapy,” Haley says. “I should. I guess.”

Dan swallows every emotion and smiles.

“Good,” he says. “That’s good.”

This time, not a single other emotion is communicated. He is proud of that.

They don’t talk for much longer. Haley has work in the morning and Dan has fuck-all in the morning. They hug goodbye at the door and Dan closes it as soon as she walks out.

Why does he tell Haley things like that? Dan is sensitive to the response from any person, but he knows it hurts more when it comes from her. She never says the right thing. Then again, it doesn’t really matter what anyone says. Knowing that should be enough to stop himself from doing it, but Dan clearly doesn’t learn from his mistakes.

Once in bed, he pulls up his phone and opens his email app. He types a quick message to Susanne. He sends it before he has time to regret it. All he wants is for someone to listen and pretend to get where he is coming from, even if they are being paid for it. He wants to keep that mountain of baggage holding him back from spilling over, for the time being. 

He can’t live with this much junk.

Dan’s phone buzzes with a message. Surely, Susanne can’t be awake and responding to work emails at one am on a Tuesday.

_I’m excited for our science project this week_

Philip Lester.

Phil, who wants to show Dan how good all the sugary drinks he has been depriving himself of are, and calls that a science project. Dan hears a laugh and realises that he is the one that made the sound.

_And when will this science project take place?_

Phil’s reply is immediate.

_Saturday?_

The cave is full of crystals that glow a comforting light. Most of the game is spent wondering about them. Storing them. Saving them for later. Dan doesn’t know what to do with this light. This colour, these contrasts, that smell like citrus and honey. They don’t fit next to all of his pain.

_Deal_

Dan agrees without a second thought. It goes as easily as the laugh that rolled out of him upon reading Phil’s text.

-

Dye wants peace. He stands in the grass with bare feet among his plants and fruits. They are all glowing. They are at the peak of their growth, shining a light as bright as the sun onto Dye’s face. For a lot of the game, any indicator that Dye is less than content comes only from White. In his locomotive, and in the cave, your character hears off-hand comments about Dye’s well being from time to time. Dan wasn’t sure whether to trust those words. In the cave, everything seemed more chaotic, more fragile, scarier.

In the garden, Dan feels safe. Dye makes him feel safe.

That sense of safety doesn’t last. On a perfectly normal day, when Dan goes to leave some seeds he foraged for at Dye’s cabin, things are different. The plants are far from wilting. The shadows are kept at a distance. No screams are heard, no shadow people come to disturb their progress. He doesn’t notice anything as being off except for the lack of background music that usually plays in the garden.

When Dan enters the cabin, Dye is on his knees. His small pixelated shape is pushing his hands against the wall. His head is bowed. The cut scene starts as soon as Dan approaches and right clicks him.

All that is heard are cut-off breaths and an accelerating heartbeat. Dye doesn’t move an inch. They are perfectly safe, and yet Dye fights for air. His hands squeeze into fists and he punches the wall. The sound echoes and the house shakes, like an earthquake. Dan gets no option to say or do anything. All he can do is watch as a cloud forms over Dye’s head and lightning strikes. Shadows gather around him, crowding closer and closer.

Dan couldn’t understand. The garden was in perfect form. The shadows shouldn’t be able to do this. They have never been this threatening and vivid. For as far as Dan has gone in the cave with White, the shadows they met there were tame in comparison.

There is no time to think before the cut scene abruptly ends. The shadows are coming closer and closer and Dye is losing health. His body flashes red at every impact. Dan gets the sword from his inventory, the one that is covered in vines of the most powerful flowers they have. He is careful not to strike Dye when he swings.

The shadows disappear for a moment, but materalise yet again. They take no damage. Dan panicked slightly when he played for the first time. He was scared that this was supposed to happen, that Dye would die and that the game would change accordingly.

Dan wielded his sword and threw health items at Dye. Dye’s health bar increased, but it was lowered worse than before as the shadows walked through him.

It goes on for a while, before it stops. Before another cut scene starts and White runs inside the cabin. He isn’t wearing his armour. His headphones are off. He looks like he just woke up and ran there, in his torn black t-shirt and ripped black jeans. Dan doesn’t have time to think about how or why White knew, but the moment he comes inside, the shadows disappear.

He falls to the floor next to Dye and feeds him the most valuable plants they have. The ones that he was supposed to save up for when they go to the Shadow Realm. Dye doesn’t protest. He eats. Dan stands and watches it unfold. Before, their relationship was ambiguous and suggestive, joked about. This is the first time the player witnesses something other than arguments and disagreements between them. But this, this is gentle. White seems practiced in how he helps Dye get to bed. 

Dye is nursed back to health rather quickly. As Dan and White stands by Dye’s bedside, watching him rest, Dan gets an option to say something. Dan chooses to say “ _what was that?_ ”.

“I told you,” White responds. “There’s another side to this.”

Dan chooses to say, “ _he almost died_ ”.

“Do you think this is a game?” White asks. “There’s a reason I want to stop all of this.”

White sits down on Dye’s bed and touches his shoulder. Dye wakes up and starts shaking, but White keeps his hand on him until it stops.

“Are you going to listen to me now?” White asks.

Dye doesn’t answer immediately. He sits up in bed. His usually neat braid is coming undone where it lies messily over one shoulder.

“I cannot do this anymore,” Dye says.

“So help me,” White says. “We can do it together.”

Dye looks at Dan.

“You saved me,” he says. “Had you not attacked the shadows before White arrived, I would not have made it.”

Dan’s character remains silent. There are no options to speak. Dye turns to White.

“All right,” Dye says. “I will help you with the crystals.”

From on top of the dresser on the other side of the room, a box filled with crystals starts to glow. The usual amber transcends into a rainbow pattern. Inside of the box, the crystals are finally distinguished by their individual colours.

Dan expected an explanation, when he first played. He didn’t get one. The three sprites simply turned to look at the glowing box as their mysterious sound grew louder and the scene faded to black.

The crystals had been mentioned enough for Dan to know that they had a significance to the story. The more time went on, though, collecting them in the cave became as routinely as foraging for seeds in the forest. He didn’t question it. But Dye conceded to help out with them as if White had been waiting for him to. For some reason, it didn’t take just the will of one of them in order for things to progress. They needed the other. White couldn’t go into the cave without the help of Dye’s plants. Dye, apparently, couldn’t keep the shadows from hurting him without White.

Dan didn’t realise it at the time, but in the rainbow of colour emitted from the crystal box, purple and green shone the brightest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Garands by Young The Giant  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	31. Chapter 31

On Tuesday morning, Dan doesn’t wake up to his eight am alarm.

Instead, it is to the sound of insistent knocking on his door. It doesn’t feel very different to how he woke up when Dad called and insisted he throw work and the stream out the window to see a family that doesn’t understand him. Dan coughs and stands up. He pulls a T-shirt over his head and opens the door.

There is something manic in Jimmy’s eyes.

“What-”

“Are you okay?” Jimmy interrupts him.

Jimmy looks different as he walks into Dan’s flat. He has done this countless times. They have done so many things between these four walls. Dan closes the door behind himself.

“I’m sleepy,” Dan says.

He watches as Jimmy sits down on the bed. It is over, Dan repeats in his head. He sits down next to him and watches the concern that looks awfully similar to Chris’s play across his features. Jimmy knows him better than to feel that concern, doesn’t he?

“Seriously,” Jimmy says. “Sorry to wake you early, by the way. I’m going to work soon but Chris-”

Jimmy stops.

“Chris?” Dan prompts.

“He told me you slept at his this weekend.”

Dan forgets that other people actually communicate with one another. Jimmy looks at him like he did so many times when they were together. Like Dan is broken. Like Jimmy has a need to make it better, somehow.

“He’s worried about you,” Jimmy says. “I’m worried about you.”

It doesn’t make sense, but what Dan feels is anger.

It sounds like Dad. Being worried about him while knowing nothing about him, or what he is thinking or feeling. Chris and Jimmy mean well, but Dan feels like he is being attacked rather than consoled. It is morning and Dan should be sleeping. He has work this afternoon. Perhaps they don’t think of that as a job just like Dad doesn’t.

“I’m fine,” Dan says.

“You always say that,” Jimmy counters.

Dan hates himself for making other people feel what he has felt, so many times.

If this was like before, Dan could kiss him or touch him until that concern went away. He can’t now. He has to use his words.

As eloquent as Dan is in his analysis on Fall Whisperer, and in his extensive forum posts, he doesn’t know the first thing about communicating what he is feeling to other people. 

“I’ll be fine,” Dan rephrases.

“You don’t have to be alone, you know,” Jimmy says. “People care about you.”

For some reason, Dan doesn’t feel cared for.

“Jimmy,” Dan sighs.

“Can you go to Chris’s sometime this week?” Jimmy asks. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Dan says.

He probably won’t. But Jimmy calms down. He gets his bearings. He nods.

“Seriously, Jimmy,” Dan says, because the guilt is eating him up inside. “Don’t worry about me. I’m good.”

Jimmy stands up and Dan follows him. Jimmy hugs him tightly. Dan is hesitant, but he wraps his arms around Jimmy’s smaller frame and runs his fingers through his hair. Jimmy breathes deeply.

“I’m sorry that I scared you,” Dan murmurs. “Or Chris. I’m sorry.”

Jimmy takes a step back. Dan aches.

“When you talk to me like that,” Jimmy says, “and touch me like that…”

Even though there is warning in Jimmy’s tone, Dan wants to do it more. He wants to take all of this hurt away. He wants Jimmy to feel good.

It would be embarrassing to try. Dan hasn’t been able to get hard in a week.

“Sorry,” Dan says.

“Tomorrow?” Jimmy presses.

“Tomorrow,” Dan echoes.

To Jimmy it may sound like a sure thing. Dan doesn’t mean it as one. As soon as Jimmy leaves, Dan is back in bed. He sleeps past his alarm.

-

**ripewhisperer** : I know something is up because this is the most exciting week in the fandom since I joined it and you are nowhere to be seen.

**ripewhisperer** : Don’t tell anyone but I miss you and I hope you are okay.

Dan can’t look anywhere without being subjected to this worry.

**achromatic_bot** : some stuff came up last week so i couldn’t make the stream and then I was busy. but I’m okay what did i miss lol

Jamie doesn’t usually answer at this time in the day. Dan clicks over to the forum and reads some of the new threads that have been made since the stream. He avoids the heavier discourse, but he finds himself enjoying the excitement from the less concerned people in the fandom. Morgan has posted art. 

Dan recognises this one. It is a drawing she never posted, because she has always insisted on “not getting shippy with it”.

In this one, White is sitting next to Dye on his bed. It looks like the scene when Dye finally surrenders and faces his fears. But it is painted in Morgan’s striking, vivid way, and instead of just sitting there, they are kissing.

It is one of Dan’s favourites. The like and dislike ratio on the post is almost completely even. Even after the reveal, there is a large amount of people on the forum that are in denial. They claim that the fandom can’t be sure of whether Dye and White are actually together. Because the promo thing said ‘what caused them to fall in love?’, which opens up for debate on whether they are _still_ in love. Dan is still astounded that there is such a deep disregard for what is and has been plain to see for a long time, instilled in a large part of the fandom. So he stops himself from overthinking about how it may look, and likes the picture. He comments that he loves it.

Dan looks at the drawing a bit more. It makes him feel something other than fear of what his brain will subject him to today. He decides to DM Morgan and shower her in praise, because there isn’t a lot that makes him feel anything other than fear right now.

Irregularsymbol has shouted him out in a tweet. That would explain the increase in followers. Seagull has tweeted his squawks, this time accompanied by the Caves and Garden cover. TriangleNoses has posted some sketches. They are all of landscapes. The setting is familiar, but there is a different vibe to them that Dan can’t really place.

**ripewhisperer** : I know there’s more to it than that but whatever, I’m glad to hear from you Chrome <3

**falldelight** : ILY THANK YOU I NEVER THOUGHT I’D BE ABLE TO POST THAT ONE ;_;

**falldelight** : I HAVEN’T STOPPED SCREAMING SINCE IT WAS ANNOUNCED

Dan laughs. He decides to go to open the server. Morgan is online. Dye and White are back in the game. Dan rolls his shoulders and forgets everything else. He is going to chat with Morgan and Jamie and he is going to game because, for the first time since he came home, he finds himself enjoying something again.

**achromatic_bot** : what is this

He walks around their garden and finds several signs saying “DYE AND WHITE” repeatedly, placed in an irregular pattern. Morgan’s sprite has blue hair today. She runs up to him.

**falldelight** : I WASN’T JOKING WHEN I SAID I HAVEN’T STOPPED SCREAMING

Dan chuckles.

**achromatic_bot** : the caps lock hurts my ears just reading it mate

**falldelight** : SORRY. CAPS LOCK KEY GOT STUCK WHEN *IT* HAPPENED

Dan missed this. Fuck, he missed it so badly. Jamie runs up to Dan and jumps up and down next to him. Morgan starts jumping, too.

**achromatic_bot** : tf is wrong w you

He starts jumping, too. It feels a bit like it did a few years ago, when this was new and exciting. Dan feels some type of painful nostalgia. That was the worst time in his life. But his online life was good. He formed relationships that he still has to this day. It was like a kind of honeymoon phase, except when Dan turned off the computer most of the good feelings left him. Maybe the fandom was more fun then because Dan’s life was worse. Or maybe Dan is worse off now, not finding the same enjoyment in it that he once did.

It doesn’t exactly matter. His online life is his lifeline, and he has to make sure it stays that way. He spends hours messing with Jamie and Morgan and eventually Sam and Mason as well, when they come online. They talk about _Caves and Gardens_ and tend to the plants. Dan considers himself lucky to be part of such a solid group, that acts just as stupid as he does about this bloody game.

-

Dan has had every opportunity to cancel and not go through with this. And yet he has arrived at the building and all he has to do is press the buzzer for Chris to let him inside. He could turn and leave just as well. 

Dan presses the button. Chris lets him in.

It takes Dan five minutes to work up the courage to ask where the hell Jimmy is. He feels his absence viscerally. Chris isn’t his friend, but when they sit by the kitchen island it feels like they are supposed to be. It is just that no one is here to bridge the gap of not really knowing each other. Some third party to make the small talk somewhat bearable.

“He’s at work,” Chris answers, confused. “You know he works days right?”

Jimmy has left him with an almost stranger because he is worried about him. Chris is worried about him. Dan feels it when his stomach sinks.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Dan says.

Chris has gone out of view and Dan stares at the wall opposite him. The counters and the cabinets and the oven and the sink. Dan’s mouth goes dry.

He only turns back when Chris doesn’t respond. There is something happening here and Dan doesn’t know what. They don’t know each other. Dan shouldn’t be directing his confusion at Chris.

Chris’s eyes look like they did on Friday night. Pained in this deep way that Dan doesn’t understand.

“Seriously,” Dan says, because he can’t stand the silence. “I’m all good. I was just in a weird mood when I saw you last.”

A weird mood. That is what he is reducing the panicked way he rushed to Jimmy’s house, choking on a mountain of anxiety and fear upon being forced to face a past he wants to forget. Dan shakes his head and looks away.

“Jimmy didn’t ask me to babysit you,” Chris says, finally.

“Didn’t he?” Dan snaps.

He stares into Chris’s eyes as something starts to boil inside. Chris stares back helplessly.

The sound of a door being unlocked makes both of them jump. Phil walks inside, feels the obvious tension in the room, and silently removes his coat. Dan feels an intense need to cry. It comes so quickly it makes him dizzy.

“I,” Dan says, standing up on unsteady feet. “Bathroom.”

He hurries past Phil in the hall and into the bathroom. He locks the door and steadies himself against the sink. He turns on the water and tries to relax, but nothing happens. He can’t just stand here and cry. So instead all he can do is stand inside that tension and stare into his own eyes reflected in the mirror. He doesn’t recognise himself. He looks like he hasn’t slept for days, even though that is all he has really been doing. If he saw someone that looked like this, he would be worried too.

Dan exits the bathroom. Chris is no longer sitting at the kitchen island. But Dan hears Phil’s voice and Chris’s laugh in response. He considers taking his coat and leaving.

“Dan, hi!” Phil says when Dan comes back in.

Phil stands up from the sofa and walks up to him without an ounce of the stare Chris and Jimmy has been subjecting him to. He wraps Dan up in a hug that Dan wants to melt inside. But there is no citrus and honey to breathe in.

“You smell different,” Dan says when he pulls back.

Phil laughs.

“Do I?”

He makes way to sit back down and Dan goes with him without a thought.

He realises how strange the comment was the moment he sits down. Chris has shed some of that pain and instead looks between him and Phil with amusement.

“Phil’s had to meet someone that doesn’t approve of the womens’ body wash,” Chris chuckles.

Phil raises an eyebrow at Dan. Dan meets it with a hesitant smile.

“Well, I prefer the honey one,” Dan says. “Or, honey and lemon, right? Something yellow.”

There is an ocean in Phil’s eyes that Dan wants to swim in. Phil doesn’t react like other people do. When Dan is about to try and back track, Phil grins and shakes his head.

“Noted,” he says. “And yeah, you got it.”

“I only knew because your room is covered in it,” Dan rushes to explain.

Chris and Phil look at him for a moment. Dan laughs.

“I mean,” Dan shakes his head. “Uh.”

“Oh, no, Chris told me about your little rendez-vous,” Phil says. “And what are you saying? Is it bad?”

“No, no,” Dan says. “I’m, uh, I like that one.”

Dan glances at Chris. Chris is still looking between them with a stupid smile on his face. But Phil doesn’t look uncomfortable in the least. He is smiling, but it isn’t stupid. He looks relaxed and confident. There isn’t a bit of the usual nervous twitches Dan usually marvels at in Phil today.

“Rendez-vous,” Chris comments, wiggling his eyebrows. “That sounds a lot more exciting than it was.”

“You weren’t entertained by my one am mental breakdown?” Dan asks with a laugh.

Chris turns into tension and Phil remains secure.

“I’m exaggerating,” Dan quickly says.

“For shame, Chris,” Phil says. “For shame.”

“I meant it just wasn’t--”

Phil stops him with a wave of a hand and a laugh.

Dan giggles his nerves.

They keep talking for a while. The strange air between Dan and Chris disappears because Phil is, apparently, a master at dispelling anything like that. The hours pass by with Mario Kart and poor fighting talk. Dan almost forgets that he has to go to work.

Phil is the one to follow him to the hallway even though Chris was the one Dan was supposed to be hanging out with. He simply leans against the door frame to the kitchen, arms crossed over his chest, as he watches Dan put on his jacket. His hair is shorter, Dan thinks now that he really looks.

“Did you get a haircut?” he asks.

Phil grins.

“Yeah,” he says.

Dan blinks. “It looks good.”

He doesn’t really know why, but suddenly his face is burning hot. He must be completely red.

“Thanks,” Phil says with a secret smile.

“What?” Dan says.

His heart thunders so hard in his chest he almost hears the glass crackle.

“Nothing,” Phil says. “Just funny that you noticed I changed my body wash before you noticed the hair.”

Dan’s first impulse is to say something to wipe away the obvious connotations hanging from Phil’s words. He decides to follow his second impulse instead.

“Funny, is it?” he asks.

Something surprised manages to make way on Phil’s confident expression. When Dan allows himself to really look at Phils face, he realises that the yellow in his eyes looks especially yellow today. 

“Hilarious,” Phil answers, deadpan. “Literally rolling on the floor laughing.”

Dan bites back a laugh.

“Same,” he says, matching Phil’s tone. “I’m screaming right now.”

Phil is the one that cracks up first. Dan still holds back, even though his shoulders are shaking with giggles.

It isn’t that funny, but then, Dan hasn’t really laughed in a while. It feels good.

“I really have to head to work,” Dan says.

Phil stands up and touches Dan’s arm. In his mind’s eye, Dan sees a different day in this very hallway when Phil seemed to understand something that no one else would.

He does that a lot, come to think of it.

“Alright,” Phil says. “See you tomorrow?”

He isn’t standing that close but Dan is sure he can feel the heat of his breath.

“What?” Dan says. “Tomorrow?”

“Therapy,” Phil says.

Dan smiles. Phil smiles back.

When Dan leaves, he keeps that smile at the back of his mind all the way to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Hello World by Louie Zong  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)
> 
> Hello, did you all see @madebyfission's Dye and White art that they posted for my birthday? If you didn't, **[here's a link](https://twitter.com/madebyfission/status/1178623161103011840)**. Yes, I'm still screaming on the inside. I am also taking this little a/n moment to say thank you to all of you for reading, and for your enthusiasm. It means so much to me :')


	32. Chapter 32

October is filling the streets with yellow leaves.

On his way to work, Dan watches as the wind moves them in droves. Some are stuck to the ground, like a base to catch the next few that fall from the branches framing the street. Dan walks slowly. He doesn’t usually savour the walks to and from the tube, but something about the scenery calms him. It reminds him of icy blue eyes, pale skin, black hair. Silver coat. Honey and citrus.

Coming back to work yesterday went better than Dan would have expected the first time in a week. Last week’s two days off were not a huge irregularity, but Dan hasn’t called in sick in a long time. He hasn’t really had to. The other times, when he comes back, it is with a clouded mind and a heavy feeling of guilt and worthlessness weighing on his shoulders. Yesterday, Dan momentarily forgot about the fact that he had been gone. His head was too filled with colours that he doesn’t mind being painted by.

Reality eventually caught up with him. It always does. The concerned look on Mary’s face was enough for anxiety to fester in Dan’s chest. He can’t look anywhere without seeing that concern, that pity, recently. Different faces that poorly veil the questions on the tip of their tongues. For some reason, they know not to ask. Jimmy probably knows not to, but he asks anyway. After his shift last night, Dan responded to three texts from Jimmy. The first one asked him how he had been doing over at Chris’s and Phil’s. The second one asked him how he is doing. The final one told him that Chris hadn’t been babysitting.

Dan answered that he was fine, and that he had had fun hanging out with them. He ignored the final text. Remembering the confusion in Chris’s expression and the tension and the way his throat hurt from holding back from crying was too much in itself. He didn’t have it in him to discuss it with someone else.

There is concern on Mary’s face today, too. She is swallowing all the questions, anything that she knows Dan won’t take well. 

Concern should feel nice. Dan knows, in the back of his mind, that Jimmy isn’t trying to be overbearing. He simply wants to help, because he cares. For as many nights as Dan has spent crying over his perpetual loneliness, he can’t take whatever the opposite of it is. Jimmy’s care doesn’t feel right. Regardless of how careful he is, anything getting near all of the things that Dan so adamantly protects stings. 

Concern is something Dan grew up in absence of. He couldn’t count on his parents to break his fall. It was all about making sure Mum didn’t get upset. When Dan reached out for empathy, he got eyerolls in return. If they helped him with something, Dan knew they would eventually hold it against him. And yet, when it got too much and a seam cracked, emotions slipping through enough for his parents to finally notice, the first thing they always asked him was why he hadn’t asked for help before. Eventually, it forced him to hold it back in favour of peace and quiet and Mum not getting upset. Asking for help only lead to more problems.

It is quite obvious that Jimmy is not trying to give Dan more problems. And yet, Dan can’t help but react with premature anger. Anger that comes because from experience Dan has learned that being helped means he is automatically indebted. Being helped means that he is burdening another person. Jimmy has no reason to be subjected to his anger. He isn’t the person that Dan is angry at, really. But acting against his impulses isn’t Dan’s strong suit. So Jimmy gets that anger in return and those short, clipped responses. It is what causes Dan to remain alone. Safe from misplacing his trust, yes, but all the more vulnerable to the shadows he has accumulated over the years. He wonders how much more damage he is able to take.

All Dan can do is protect himself the way he knows how to. He spent enough years in the cave, trying to change things despite the limitations suppressing him. Concern hurts, and so Dan sits among his flowers and plants and fruits in the garden until it goes away.

Dan remembers the exception when it enters the clinic.

There is no concern in Phil’s eyes. Dan doesn’t shrink under his gaze. He easily meets that crooked smile. Phil leans on his elbows on the opposite side of the window. 

“No boy products today,” Dan comments when he catches the scent of honey and citrus.

Phil smirks.

“You said you preferred this one, right?” he asks.

Dan snorts, anything to cover the fluttering starting up inside.

“I did,” he says. “What about the person yesterday, though?”

It slips out before Dan can stop it. Phil laughs nervously as his anxiety-laden fingers fiddle with the hem of his shirt.

“I mean,” Dan shakes his head. “Sorry. That was…”

“Fine,” Phil fills in. “Completely fine.”

Dan shuts his mouth.

“The _person_ with the bad taste in body wash is thankfully not someone I have to meet often,” Phil says.

He collects himself so quickly. Next to the Underground, sadness had danced across his features and then twirled away, too. Yet it doesn’t seem like holding back. Phil has some ability to let go of whatever weighs him. 

“Thank fuck for that,” Dan says.

This laugh isn’t nervous. It is real. Dan loves Phil’s real laugh.

“Thank fuck for that,” Phil agrees.

There is some innocent glee in Phil’s eyes, a thrill, like him and Dan are getting away with something. It is absolutely infectious.

“I’ve signed you in,” Dan says, composing himself. “Eric should be out any moment.”

“Are you still up for our science project on Saturday?” Phil asks.

Dan’s cheeks go hot.

“You really need to stop calling getting coffee a ‘science project’, Phil,” he says.

Phil cocks an eyebrow.

“Why?” he asks. “You like it.”

In lieu of stumbling over his words and making a fool of himself, Dan snorts a laugh. Phil’s eyes are intense on him. Dan isn’t stupid. He knows exactly what this is but it is scary to think. He looks down.

“Alright,” he says.

Phil giggles. Dan looks up. It is impossible not to laugh along with him.

“But we said Saturday,” Phil insists. "Unless... you want to tomorrow?"

There is hope in Phil's eyes that Dan wants to keep. Tomorrow is scary, though.

“You work during the days, right?” Dan asks.

Phil looks confused for a second before his features smooth out. Right. Work is not something they talk about.

“Yeah.”

There is distance in his tone. Dan wants to close it as soon as he can.

“So, it works better on Saturday then?” he reasons. “I have work tomorrow night. I figured you won’t be available before that.”

The distance is closed. Phil looks genuinely excited in a way that Dan rarely sees from people his age. This, too, is infectious.

“Oh, of course,” Phil says. “Yeah. You’re right. That makes sense.”

“No promises, though,” Dan says, because he has to.

Something new appears in Phil’s expression. 

Warmth. The light isn’t just bright. It reaches Dan. He feels it.

“Obviously,” Phil smiles.

Eric is the one to interrupt their back and forth. He enters the waiting room and looks between Phil and Dan. He hardly looks surprised by the fact that the two of them are still talking, several minutes after Dan made sure he got the message that Phil had arrived. He just nods towards Phil. Phil nods back, but he swiftly looks back at Dan and mouths ‘Saturday’.

Dan grins. He mouths ‘no promises’. Phil raises his eyebrows in mock offence. Dan covers his mouth not to laugh out loud.

-

The way that life puts itself together after it has fallen apart makes it feel frail. In front of his computer, playing Fall Whisperer with Sam and Jamie, there is nothing to really dampen his mood. Dan’s coffee tastes good, his friends’ banter puts a smile on his face. He ended the day yesterday by masturbating, after a week of not being able to even get hard. He comes back, but it is on unsteady legs. Every fall back removes another layer of strength. He only gets weaker, more vulnerable, more scared.

It seems backwards. It shouldn’t be worth it. He enjoys the calm now, because he knows that it won’t last. Something will happen and if something doesn’t happen, Dan makes something happen. And if nothing happens, Dan’s brain takes him to the darkness even if there is nothing to really bring him there. Now he exists in this deceptive sense of peace. Deceptive, because it isn’t autonomous. He is distinctly aware of the fact that the present is coming back to him, and that the feelings from the past are going dormant for an underdetermined amount of time. This hyperawareness takes away from the relief. He has to be careful. Jimmy keeps texting him and he answers what he can. That insistence does the opposite of what it should. Dan ends up promising himself that the next time he falls apart, he does so quietly. He does so alone. No matter how much it hurts, he will hide it.

It is so tiring. The thought patterns are exactly the same as they always are. Dan thinks of yellow leaves and lights in the cave. He keeps them at a distance. They approach him and approach him until they hit the wall and bounce back, or disappear completely. Dan knows this because he does the same thing, every time. He knows what to expect from the path he takes, time and time again, ever since he moved to London.

He is driving in the dark, along that path that he can’t see but keeps to because he knows it by heart. There is a curiosity growing, asking what would happen if he happened to change lanes. Steer a bit to the right, or to the left. Maybe one of those paths has streetlight. Dan can’t know, because he hasn’t checked. 

Dan made a promise, years ago. If he goes by the conditions he put on himself at the time, he shouldn’t be here anymore to consider these things.

His family is fine. He doesn’t have anything to change in his relationships. He has no business to finish. The darkness is right there. He could fulfill his promise. His life doesn’t offer more than short breaks from something other than the pain of the past, slowing down his steps. He has no hope for a future that offers less than half the time spent above the surface.

And yet, Dan sits in the waiting room at his therapist’s office because he chose to return. There is some juvenile hope remaining inside of him that asks whether there could be more to life.

It doesn’t come from his circumstances. There is nothing about Dan’s circumstances that begs him to stay, and to fight, and to keep going. But Dan keeps going. Every time, Dan starts over or goes back to the straight path. He regrows the garden and reenters the cave and grabs a hold of the wheel. Inside of the heart that Dan insists is broken, there is a motivation to live, and to hope.

Susanne tells him this like it is obvious. Dan can only focus on her winged black eyeliner as he forces himself not to squirm. The silence sits heavy between them.

“You are allowed to give yourself some credit for that,” Susanne says.

Dan feels an intense urge to change something. Susanne knows him as the child of an abusive father and an alcoholic mother. This whole time, he has let himself be the residue of that situation. Dan thinks about Mum’s hand touching his cheek and resents the memory. He resents the feeling it brings into his chest, like there is something he can find there that he won’t, anywhere else.

He doesn’t want to be that anymore. He wants to be a person.

Like Dye, after the shadows pushed him over the edge, Dan can no longer let the prevention rule his life. Small life, small thoughts, deny, deny, deny, until something happens. But he can’t walk around the cave in aimless patterns, either, hoping it will change things. He has to do something real. He has to use the crystals he keeps picking up.

“Can you give yourself some credit, Dan?” Susanne asks.

Dan looks down. It isn’t about credit. He doesn’t want to analyse who is right or wrong anymore. He just wants to be more than this. He needs to.

Dan looks into Susanne’s eyes. His heart roars as he forces himself to speak.

“I want to talk about something else today.”

Susanne doesn’t look as surprised as Dan expected. Instead she smiles, and nods, encouraging.

“Of course,” she says. “Go ahead.”

Dan could stop this but he doesn’t want to. He wants to be a person. He wants to take the step that Dye did on that day, where simply existing stopped being enough. For Dan, simply existing stopped being enough a long time ago. Since, he has been floating in space, unsure of where to take the life he is somehow ready to live now. He can’t bring it into the arms of another person, just to feel something. He can’t put it in the hands of his parents, asking them to somehow undo the past. He can’t spend it immersed in distraction.

He knows what could make him feel fulfilled, if he allowed himself to. If he could get past the fear. 

The answers are all around him. Like the crystals in the cave, they remain like little enigmas, lights that shine for no other reasons than to shine. Dan keeps them in his hands and puts them away, hoping they will find their way back to him. He can’t do that. He needs to hold on to them for a bit longer.

Dan has to speak for himself. He has to tell the world who he is and what he wants. Leaving things up for interpretation doesn’t work anymore, not when it makes people keep misunderstanding him. He has to assert his position.

“Dan?” Susanne asks when Dan stays quiet.

“I’m gay.”

It is hard to breathe now. He is in a self inflicted choke hold that makes him second guess every thought leading up to this.

“Okay,” Susanne responds.

Between the four walls of Susanne’s office, something new begins to exist.

Dan decides to press on.

“I’ve been suicidal for years,” he says. “I don’t remember a time that I wasn’t.”

This makes Susanne take a moment. Her eyes scream compassion and for once, Dan disregards what he learned about it. He accepts it.

“Are you suicidal now?” Susanne asks.

The darkness is there. It’s waiting to swallow him whole. But Dan can’t think about the promise he made, back when he was in the worst of it, without feeling the spectator’s glare, the utter fear that the thought of killing himself now starts in him. It used to bring him so much comfort, to know that he had the power to end it all and that he would, one day. He misses that comfort. But it isn’t there anymore.

“No,” Dan says.

Because it is true, and it is terrifying.

If Dan doesn’t want to die, that means that he wants to live. And what does that mean? Dan never prepared to want that. He doesn’t know how to want it.

All he knows is that there are crystals in his peripheral and if he dared to, he could do something to move them into full view. It isn’t what he planned for, and as terrifying as that is, one thing has become true;

Dan doesn’t want to die anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Something Human by Muse  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	33. Chapter 33

Once Dye agrees to help out with the crystals, everything gets faster.

At first, the player is asked to explore the cave with White to collect more. Dan had felt anxious about it at first, leaving Dye on his own now that he knew what could happen to him when the shadows became aggressive, and that the state of the garden was no guarantee to keep him safe. Collecting crystals wasn’t the same now as it once had been. Instead of simply digging them out and storing them for no apparent reason, all glowing amber with no distinction from one another, this time collecting also meant learning.

When they returned to Dye’s cabin at the end of the day, this time they were asked to place the crystals in separate boxes instead of placing them all in the same box. White could tell the difference between them. As he studied and dusted them, they began to shine with their own colour. Once you learned about one, its colour was no longer amber, not even inside the cave. After enough collecting, walking through the caves was no longer darkness versus sinister amber. The rooms became a rainbow of lights, all the different types shining their originality.

Dan learned that the crystals all had different strengths and weaknesses. The most common one that he found was Quartz. It didn’t have much use outside the fact that when you collect enough of them, you are able to fuse any amount of them to another type of crystal and, in doing so, enhance its power.

At this point, inventory space was harder to manage. Dan had created a system for how many seeds he carried and where he put them, and now he had to do it all over again for the purposes of the crystals.

It was different, though, walking through the cave. It didn’t feel as scary. In fact, Dan was fascinated by its beauty. Where before he had only noticed the shadowed corners and the unrelenting amber, the levels were now distinguished from one another by the colour of the crystal it represented. Songs played more frequently, most of the time overpowering the echoing screams of the shadows. 

Going down the levels meant walking through these gradients and hues, until you got deep enough. Then, the levels were no longer colour coordinated, but displaying all of the different shades. Dan walked through rainbow rooms in search for the rare ones, the ones that were needed to finally allow them to walk through the Darkness of the Portal. What he needed to do now was to find out which ones matched, which ones didn’t, and what effects they had. Really, truly studying the crystals now meant that he could infuse his items with some of their power. 

The Opal made it so that you no longer had to stock up on arrows quite as often, as they then returned after you shot them. Dye called this trait ‘loyalty’. The Turquoise was good for armour, so that the shadows did less damage. This was called ‘safety’. Another crystal, which was ironically difficult to find, was the Amber, and it provided something called ‘harmony’. It made sure that they didn’t exhaust themselves too quickly, and they didn’t have to eat quite as much to regain health.

They were all useful, but the longer the quest took, the more Dan realised that he was not yet near finding the ones they really needed. He was tempted to cheat at the time, to look for clues on the forum in order to know how and where to find the crystals that would take them to the Shadow Realm the fastest. He refrained from doing so, in the end. Dan has played enough video games to know that for him, much of the satisfaction lies in figuring it out on his own. And so he kept going to the caves with White, each exploration more successful than the last, as they brought home crystals for Dye to put in order at the end of the day.

Dan noticed changes between them at this point. The cutting remarks and arguments were replaced by playful banter, looks exchanged that Dan didn’t miss. The shift had been interesting to witness. Dan had been so sure that Dye had everything together. That his way of fending off the shadows was better than White’s.

But at night, in the darkness, rainbow lights shone from the boxes of crystals and Dan started to catch Dye and White sitting together on the sofa, enjoying each other’s company. There was a new ease to Dye that Dan hadn’t realised hadn’t been there before.

This change is on Dan’s mind as the therapy sessions ends. He isn’t sure whether what he is experiencing now is a change, really. His life remains the same, his circumstances haven’t changed, and he has to go to work like he does every Friday. There is something in his thought process, though, that makes the bland greyscale of London flourish with colours. He feels almost scared to notice them. He is scared to know that the feeling that confused him for so long now has an explanation.

Dan doesn’t want to die. He wants to live.

He had imagined that, if he ever experienced the feeling of wanting to live and not just living despite wanting to die, he would feel relieved. He had imagined that this feeling would be unmatched to anything he had experienced before it. Dan has never expected to really want it. The closest he has come is wanting to want it, but it never seemed plausible. It was a childish hope that he put the fire out of after enough time of nothing changing passed.

Wanting to live doesn’t feel like happiness.

Instead, he feels more scared and more anxious than he did before. The crystals around him haven’t shifted from amber. They still seem like they’re looming and sinister around him, but they aren’t useless. They aren’t background noise. They aren’t temporary, leading his way after the darkness until the darkness consumes him again. No, Dan can study them. He can dust them off. He can reveal their true colours and learn about their purposes. What he has to do now is to start somewhere. Dan has no idea where. He doesn’t know why he wants to live, he only knows that he does. And so the anxiety festers. The spectator taunts him when it reminds him of the irony of the situation that is so well suited for him.

_You finally want to live, and you can’t even be happy about that._

Despite all of it, Dan is miserable. He is unhappy. The promise he made to the darkness, or to himself, has been broken and he can no longer find comfort in knowing he has the power to end it all like he used to. 

He ends up working on autopilot, turning over glowing amber stones in his mind, longing for them to change colours.

-

Dan reads the message over a couple times on the tube home.

He is tired. He made it through work on borrowed energy, his thoughts in a completely different place. All he wants to do is sleep and reset. Today doesn’t have more to offer in terms of personal insight, and at this point the insight he has gained only seems to weigh on his shoulders.

It is strange to mourn suicidal ideation.

_It’s been forever but Haley and I are going out tomorrow care to come with?? Jimmy’s coming, think he wanted to show us a place. And YES he asked us to ask you but we would have asked you anyway!!_

Dan wants a day where he doesn’t have to do anything. The idea of responding to a simple text message makes him feel weak.

It has been long since Dan went out with Lucy and Haley. Only thinking of last time makes his stomach feel sore. Red lips and selfishness and missing meds and panic attacks, a rush of memories that appear in a flurry of anxiety that is nauseating. Thinking back, that was the starting point of a lot of spiralling. Dan hardly recognises his life now compared to then, even though not much has really changed.

It isn’t until Dan is in bed, down to his boxers with all the lights turned off, that he remembers the science project. He groans to himself. It’s coffee, not a science project.

With a small chuckle, he reaches for his phone and sends Phil a message.

_if you were wondering whether you’ve infiltrated my brain then rest assured you have bc i just referred to us having coffee together as a science project when i was thinking about it lol_

Dan is still smiling to himself in the darkness when his phone buzzes on the nightstand.

_I’d do an evil laugh, but I think our brains have connected somehow because I saw a girl wearing scrubs earlier and thought of you_

_kinky_

_Extremely. She was sitting in a coffee shop looking like she hadn’t slept for three days. I was totally into it._

_i’ll keep that in mind_

_;)_

Dan decides not to answer. Making fun is one thing. He doesn’t want to cross any lines.

-

When Phil arrives at Dan’s flat, it is with a blatant disregard for any lines Dan has made sure to keep from crossing. When Dan imagined coffee with Phil, he thought about Starbucks and a clear blue sky and yellow leaves dancing through the air. But as Dan came out of the shower in the morning, a phone call from Phil suggested something different. London isn’t offering any clear skies today. The rain is pouring from the sky, and Phil could have just as well blamed his reasoning on that. He didn’t. He said he was curious about Dan’s place. Subjected to that assurity, Dan had a hard time saying no. He had no reason to say no. Dan wants to use the crystals he has got. Phil is an especially bright one.

Phil has brought mochas and chocolate muffins. He sits down on Dan’s desk chair while Dan sits on the bed and grimaces once he takes the first sip. Phil doesn’t hold back his laugh. He doesn’t cover it with his hand.

“I’m joking,” Dan says. “It’s good. It’s really good.”

“The theory keeps proving itself,” Phil says.

Dan shakes his head.

“Do you realise how much testing needs to be done to actually create a theory?” he asks.

Phil’s eyes don’t reflect as brightly as Dan would like them to. The lights in his flat are dull. They haven’t been adjusted to accommodate all that colour.

“What, is it a lot?” Phil asks. “Three?”

Dan’s confusion must be very apparent on his face, because Phil laughs openly before Dan even says a word. Dan tries to hold back his laugh, but right now holding back means that he still has a big goofy smile on his face.

“A right troll, you are,” he says. “Seriously.”

“So it’s more than three, then?” Phil teases.

His eyes glint with something new that makes Dan feel shy.

“Yes,” Dan says, aiming for deadpan. “It’s more than three, Phil.”

“Good.”

Phil’s smile fades a bit. He puts his drink on the desk. His muffin has already been finished. He really doesn’t hold back on sweets.

“What?” Dan says.

That one word is too much to stand on its own, but Phil refuses to say more. He lets the insinuation hang in the air. Dan can’t.

“I quite like our experiments.”

Dan stares at him. There is no room for any other interpretation.

“Oh, my God,” Dan breathes in disbelief.

Phil flailed into Dan’s flat and managed to bump into the bookshelf hard enough for a stack of paper to fall to the floor. He was a whirlwind of apologies as he reached down to help pick them up. Now, he sits on Dan’s desk chair with a smug grin on his face and laughter in his eyes. These two things shouldn’t coexist inside one person but they do, in Phil, and it suits him perfectly.

“Is it too much?” Phil asks.

There isn’t an ounce of insecurity in his voice.

“No,” Dan says, and he knows that his face is bright red. “It’s not. Experiment away.”

Phil chokes on his drink. Dan watches him cough and clutches his stomach as it cramps with laughter.

Dan can be impressed with Phil’s confidence, and the fact that it comes from a fragile, nervous place. He is intimidated by the way he holds himself and how he seems to own that he is who he is, without making a big deal out of it. It looks so effortless. Dan wouldn’t dare to ask to be a part of his life, normally. Phil is too much intrigue and contrasts that he surely would want to keep Dan’s greyscale monochrome at an arm’s length.

The thing is, Dan doesn’t have to ask. He doesn’t even consider asking. Dan slots into place beside Phil on the bed as they listen to music like it’s nothing. Phil is so much bigger than Dan’s flat has space for, but he looks comfortable. They can talk without talking and when they fall silent, Dan doesn’t feel the intense urge to fill the silence like he usually does.

Phil cares for that silence. He fills it by just being himself. He looks at Dan’s flat and he doesn’t say a word of what anyone else usually says. Perhaps it doesn’t feel like silence because when Dan looks at Phil’s face a film plays in his head, a film of different scenes that try to put together everything that Phil is and how it could be encapsulated in his physical features.

“You know,” Phil says, when a few hours have passed, “Chris meant it when he said you can come to our place any time you would like.”

Dan is the one on the desk chair now, while Phil lies on his bed. He looks up at the angled ceiling and then turns to look at Dan. There is something happening in Dan’s chest that he would rather not acknowledge at the moment. All he knows is that he never really noticed just how long and slender Phil’s neck is. 

“Oh,” Dan says.

Phil stretches his lips into a half apologetic smile.

“He told me about last Saturday,” he says. “I just. Thought you should know that I’d be fine with it, too.”

“Thanks,” Dan says, twisting.

Phil chuckles. The sound is sweet. It almost overpowers the bitter taste in Dan’s mouth.

“You slept in my bed.”

Dan doesn’t know what gave Phil the right to smile like that, with his neck on full display, in his bed.

“I did,” Dan grins back, faking confidence. “You’re looking pretty comfortable on mine.”

Phil pushes himself up on one shoulder and holds his cheek in his hand. He poses exaggeratedly. Dan blushes too hard for the displeased noise he makes to compensate for it.

“Do I?” Phil asks.

Dan looks away, a stifled smile on his face, shoulders shaking with giggles.

“Shut up,” he says.

“Makes me wonder what you looked like on my bed,” Phil muses.

Again, Phil is not playing fair. Dan glances at him.

“Too far?” Phil asks.

He is still smiling, but he sounds serious. Like he cares if this is making Dan uncomfortable.

Dan sighs with a shake of his head as he gets up, and sits down on the edge of the bed. Phil shifts to make room for him.

“No,” Dan says. His voice sounds small. The humour has slipped out of it.

Phil’s hand moves up the small of his back. Dan holds his breath as goosebumps erupt across his entire body. They must feel like spikes beneath Phil’s hand, even through the t-shirt he is wearing.

Phil’s hand disappears and Dan breathes in.

“Come here,” Phil says.

Dan doesn’t have to ask to know what he means. He expects to feel more when he turns to look at Phil’s face, but rather, the serious look on his face calms him. Dan lays down next to Phil on the queen size bed. It has never felt this small before, as Dan tries his best not to touch Phil. At the same time, it feels like a completely appropriate size for the two of them. Dan rolls onto his side and looks into the blue and yellow of Phil’s eyes.

Maybe Dan’s bed is fit for two people.

Phil’s hand travels up Dan’s arm. He traces his fingertips slowly across the naked skin. Dan closes his eyes. Phil touches all the standing hairs on Dan’s arm.

“Feel good?” Phil whispers.

Dan nods. He opens his eyes. Again, meeting Phil’s big round eyes allows him to breathe steadily. 

Phil’s fingertips travel down to Dan’s wrist. Dan turns his hand palm up. Phil smooths his fingers over it, a touch so delicate, but Dan feels it everywhere. Phil’s hand is small in Dan’s. Dan closes his fingers over Phil’s to keep him there, if only for a moment.

“Dan,” Phil breathes.

Dan feels his breath on his face. Phil looks up from the way their fingers start to intertwine, but he doesn’t meet Dan’s eyes. Instead he is staring at Dan’s mouth. Dan swallows. He wants to keep this crystal.

“Where are you with Jimmy right now?” Phil asks.

It feels entirely cold, like a bucket of ice water over a flame.

“What?” Dan says.

Phil’s smile is reassuring. Dan doesn’t feel reassured.

“Chris saw you outside his building a week ago,” Phil says.

“I know,” Dan says. “I wasn’t--- I wouldn’t---”

“It’s alright,” Phil says. “I just want to know if you’re, like… I know Jimmy said it’s over.”

They’ve talked about it. Of course they have.

Dan is in bed with his ex whatever-the-fuck’s best friend. Phil doesn’t feel like a mistake, but the logistics of it do.

“It’s over,” Dan says.

He twists his hand out of Phil’s and turns to lie on his back. Suddenly, the words seem accurate for their situation right now, as well.

“It’s not weird,” Phil says.

“Isn’t it?” Dan asks.

He stares into Phil’s eyes in challenge and he doesn’t find a challenge back. He only finds that calmness. Phil’s fingertips come back to Dan’s arm. The gesture tugs at something inside.

“What’s up?” Phil whispers.

Dan closes his eyes.

“Jimmy is my best friend’s ex boyfriend,” Dan says. “And you’re his best friend.”

Phil hums.

“And?”

Dan looks at him.

“And I don’t know why I keep putting myself in situations like this,” Dan says.

“What do you mean?”

Dan swallows.

“Well, you can hear what it sounds like,” he says.

“I don’t give a fuck what it sounds like.”

Dan stares into Phil’s eyes and there is no humour to be found in this moment, but somehow they find it at the exact same time. They start to giggle. 

The bed frame knocks onto the wall as they shake with laughter and that only makes them laugh harder. Phil squeezes Dan’s shoulder for purchase and Dan doesn’t even think about the touch. It’s that natural, yet it manages to calm him down a little bit. Phil’s laughter ebbs out and he scoots closer, resting his cheek on the back of his hand.

“I don’t care what it sounds like,” Phil repeats. “I don’t care if you’re not over Jimmy. I just want to…”

He breathes in a nervous breath. Dan’s chin wobbles with emotion.

“I just want to be in your life,” Phil finishes.

He says it so easily, despite the pause. He even smiles.

Dan thinks about all of the feelings he has convinced himself that he is incapable of feeling. The spectator is quiet. There is nothing standing between Dan and those emotions now. But as they begin to manifest somewhere inside, they aren’t created out of nothing. It isn’t something new, putting the jagged pieces of Dan’s heart together. He has felt this way before.

Dan has convinced himself time and time again that he doesn’t fall in love. He doesn’t feel the appropriate emotions. He can’t get himself past the past and into the present. These are all ghosts of thoughts that have circulated in his head for a long time, in different situations, and right now they seem so incredibly inaccurate.

Dan does feel. 

He felt it when his mum touched his cheek. He felt love for her in that moment.

He felt it when Jimmy tried and tried to get him to open up. When he kissed him in his most vulnerable moments and remained adamant on staying, despite Dan’s best efforts to push him away.

He was in love with Jimmy. He was sad when it ended.

Dan didn’t realise. He was too stuck to realise. Everything about him and Jimmy hurt because Dan felt the same thing, but he wouldn’t allow himself to admit it. Everything about Mum and Dad hurts because he loves them, but he won’t allow himself to admit that, either.

Phil extends his arm over Dan’s torso, seemingly unbothered by the silence that followed his admission. Dan should say something. But the previous quiet of his mind is replaced with memories Dan has of Jimmy, all doused in a different light. When the lens of denial is cast to the side, they don’t hurt because of Dan’s lack of emotion. They hurt because he was feeling all of the things that he told himself he didn’t, and he wouldn’t let himself so much as acknowledge that.

Dan isn’t scared of Phil. He looks down at the mop of black hair on his shoulder. Phil looks up to face him. The sun is setting. There is darkness all around them. Phil’s hair has fallen over his forehead, making the contrasts that much more apparent. Black falling on white. Dan brushes his knuckles against Phil’s cheek, so so soft, and Phil’s big eyes remain trained on him.

Their surroundings fade as Dan searches Phil’s face, this amber light that could reveal its colour and stay. Something changes in Phil’s expression. The smile fades. Every other emotion pales in comparison to this. This connection. It is unlike anything Dan has experienced before.

Phil, too, is monochrome in the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder) by The Beach Boys  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)
> 
> this week, mellisa @spaceplumbs on twitter shared [**[this gorgeous art]**](https://twitter.com/spaceplumbs/status/1181863539734192128) inspired by monochrome! make sure to check it out and support her! :) thank you thank you thank you for making it <3


	34. Chapter 34

They haven’t moved an inch for a good while, but Dan feels no urge to leave this space.

He moves his fingers to Phil’s hairline. As he brushes them over the neatly shaved hair on the side, Phil’s loud eyes fall shut. He exhales. Any amount of tension he has been holding is released. His shoulder slumps. He tightens his hold of Dan’s side and noses at Dan’s neck. If only he tipped his chin up a little bit, he would practically be nuzzling him.

Dan would probably like that.

“Feel good?” Dan whispers.

He earns a smile in return, a breathy laugh.

“Yeah,” Phil responds.

His voice is so full of emotion in a way that Dan hasn’t heard it before. Dan is pulled in two different directions; one that is intrigued to hear it again, and another that is enjoying the silence.

Phil doesn’t speak, but when he opens his eyes and locks them with Dan’s, it doesn’t feel like silence. He is looking at him with every amount of feeling that went into the words he said earlier.

_I just want to be in your life._

Dan has done nothing to earn that. He should be telling Phil to run before he gets hurt.

The difference, though, is that Dan doesn’t feel the need to earn anything with Phil. There is something here that connects them whether they want it to or not, something that Dan is scared to name. Whatever it is, it feels bigger than any insecurities that are trying to make themselves heard somewhere in Dan’s mind.

Dan isn’t sure of many things in his life, but next to Phil, he grows certain that Phil is feeling the exact same thing.

Despite the possibility of taking this further, Dan is perfectly content to remain like they are right now. Brushing his fingers along Phil’s scalp, and watching the emotions play around on his face as the pleasure of each touch hits him. Dan wants nothing more and nothing less than this. The spectator isn’t here. Even as Dan acknowledges its absence, it doesn’t appear.

The relief of feeling able to stay inside a moment moves through him in waves that fills Dan with an intense urge to cry. Phil’s urgent eyes flick from focusing on one eye to the next in quick succession.

“Sorry,” Dan says, “I…”

Phil takes hold of Dan’s hand, moves it down from the side of his head. Somehow, Dan understands this to mean that this is okay. That Phil is saying emotions are allowed here. Dan breathes out and blinks away the tears.

“I want you in my life, too,” he says.

The smile that appears is soft. Phil’s eyes glow like bright blue crystals, but that is not his colour. If Phil matches a crystal, it has to be Dan’s favourite. 

It isn’t difficult to imagine Phil as purple.

Maybe Dan should consider what that means, but he doesn’t want to think right now.

Phil squeezes Dan’s hand. Somehow, Dan understands this to mean that Phil knows. He knows that what they have is different.

There is no spectator. All there is is silence, and understanding, and that is enough.

-

No matter how much time has passed, when the phone rings, it feels too soon. Dan doesn’t want to break whatever spell they are under.

“Are you going to get that?” Phil asks.

Dan wants to say no.

“Yeah.”

He reaches for his phone on the nightstand. It’s Lucy.

“Alright,” Dan answers.

He sits up. Phil sits up with him, putting some distance between them.

“Hi! We’re going to pre-party at mine,” Lucy says. “Are you ready?”

Going out. With Lucy, Haley, and Jimmy.

Dan glances at Phil who glances back with a smile. Dan returns it without even thinking about it.

“Yeah,” Dan says. “I’ll be over in a few.”

“Really?” Lucy sounds so excited that Dan feels guilty. “Hey, Dan’s actually coming!”

Dan hears an enthusiastic ‘ _woo!_ ’ from Haley in the background. It feels nice.

“See you in a bit, Lucy,” Dan says.

“Yeah, alright, see you!”

When Dan hangs up, he doesn’t return to whatever he and Phil had before. The rest of the world has come back in focus.

“Got places to be?” Phil asks.

He stands up. Dan has a moment of desperation. He doesn’t want Phil to leave. He feels like if Phil goes, he will fall apart.

“Reckon so,” Dan shrugs. “Just partying, I guess. Jimmy’s coming, too.”

There must be some pain in Phil’s expression, because Dan feels it.

“Do you want to come along?”

Phil shakes his head.

“Not my scene,” he says. “I have plans with PJ anyway.”

“Oh.”

They stand in silence.

“It’s not really my scene either, to be honest,” Dan supplies.

“It’s Jimmy’s scene,” Phil nods.

There is something between them. Dan still feels the connection. There is an openness to Phil’s eyes that only waits for Dan to fall back into the space they were in before.

“Care to keep up with our science project?” Dan asks. “Soon-ish?”

Phil cracks a smile.

“Obviously,” he says. “More than three, right?”

Dan grins back.

“Yeah,” he says. “More than three.”

-

It seems almost inappropriate, to be around Haley, Lucy, Will and Rob again. Dan tries to act like he normally does, but it is difficult. What he really wants to do is apologise to every single person in here.

They have been with him for a long time, through a lot of things. Even if they didn’t always know something was going on, simply being asked to hang out made Dan feel more like a person in moments when he barely even wanted to be one. Dan doesn’t want to treat people like that. He doesn’t want to be the person that disappears, and says no, and then comes back with no explanation. Only taking, taking, and taking without giving anything back other than some stupid jokes.

When Dan looks at these people now, he doesn’t really see what he sees with Chris, Jimmy, PJ and Phil. All he really sees is tension, in different forms, between different people.

Haley and Lucy get along because they have to. Lucy and Will have some unspoken arguments that make them snap at each other which they explain away as a sibling thing. Rob seems to feel like Dan, on the outside looking in. He doesn’t really have any business with anyone but Will.

There is still a longing in Dan’s chest. Haley and Lucy are sat on the floor sharing a bottle of red wine. Will and Rob are sitting on the sofa, hand in hand. From the armchair, Dan watches as they exchange looks that are filled with so much love and security that he feels the need to look away. Haley, Lucy, and Will are getting loud but every time Rob so much as squeezes his hand, Will settles. With a smile and glinting eyes, this silent conversation continues. Dan can’t stop himself from trying to decipher it.

He decides to hold back from drinking too much. He has a glass or two, making conversation but mostly keeping himself on the outskirts of the situation.

Dan would rather be back home, processing everything. He doesn’t want to close his heart now that it has opened, but trying to chat and laugh like a normal person with his friends without sharing too much begs him to.

Jimmy’s eyes were so bright. They kept begging for Dan to give in.

He wasn’t ready, at the time. As much potential as they had, Dan wasn’t capable of living up to it. He wants to be angry, but for now he just feels sad. Sad, and lonely, and stupid. Always too late, feeling what he was supposed to feel a long time when it hurts the most.

He should’ve given into the love he felt for Mum when he visited. He should have let her know. Maybe something could have started then, between the two of them. Something other than mending wounds and repressing memories. But he didn’t. Instead, Dan crashed and burned.

And now he is realising that he was on the same page as Jimmy was the whole time, when it is inappropriate to go back. When Jimmy surely can’t trust him to actually be as in it as he is.

Rob and Will looks so sure of each other. For a moment, Dan thinks he recognises what exists between them. It doesn’t match what he had with Jimmy, but he has felt that with someone. Dan looks away again. Whatever he thinks they have, Dan must be mistaken.

Phil wants to be a part of Dan’s life. Dan wants Phil to be a part of his life. 

What Dan thought he recognised suggests more than just being a part of each other’s lives.

Rob meets Dan’s eye. He looks concerned for a moment. Dan smiles at him to put him at ease. Fake smiles don’t work on Rob, but Rob pretends to buy it and returns to his conversation with Will. The moment passes and Dan forgets to allow his thoughts to consume him as Lucy plops down in his lap and urges him to drink some more.

-

Dan doesn’t exactly like the reminder of what a Saturday night looks like in London.

Haley and Lucy are laughing, apparently not bothered about the threatening people framing the streets. Dan doesn’t look Haley in the eye, too aware of the fact that if he does, she will feel what he is feeling. Dan doesn’t wish that on anyone, even if the anxiety is dulled by the low buzz he is riding because of the couple of glasses of wine he had back at their flat.

When Phil left, the spectator returned. It made him enter this strange state of mind, pulling him away from the present. Not the past, but elsewhere. It makes him look at his life like he himself isn’t an active participant in it. Dan can’t tell if it has to do with Phil’s absence or not. All he knows is that, for once, he would prefer spending time with another person to solitude.

The spectator says nothing new. It is all about questioning the time Dan spent in the present, and accusations about whether Dan faked it or not. Because how could Dan ever feel something real? Are the insights he made, knowing what he has felt and feels for his parents and for Jimmy, only part of a fabricated reality? One that Dan makes because, if he doesn’t, nothing makes sense. Everything feels chaotic, unless he breaks down his past into sections that he can only vaguely understand after they have happened. Does love fit into that fake narrative?

When Phil was around, Dan felt no inclination to question it. He felt so sure, so confident that he had the answer to a question he hadn’t even known he had been asking himself. Dan can’t yet tell what to trust. Is the person he is when he is with Phil more reliable than the person he is when he is alone? And if that is the case, is that not a sign of weakness?

Lucy isn’t shy about pointing out Dan’s silent brooding as they walk the amber lit cobblestone streets that will take them to the club Jimmy instructed the three of them to meet him in. Lucy and Haley hold on to the idea of a surprise, but Dan knows where they are heading. He has been there before. Those nights weren’t the type of outing Dan would invite either of the girls to, though. They weren’t so much about partying as they were about fulfilling a need.

Jimmy greets them inside a loud, dark room with flickering lights by swinging his arm around Dan’s side and keeping it there. Dan jumps and laughs. The girls laugh as well. The club’s walls are covered with rainbow flags. There are drag queens and colourful hairstyles and excessive accessorising all around them. Dan feels something hopeful beat inside of him, watching these unashamedly queer people live their lives.

It reminds him of the fact that Susanne knows Dan is gay. Before the panic arrives, he remembers that no one else does. The rest can only assume. Dan doesn’t want to leave things up to interpretation anymore, but he needs to do it one step at a time. Even in this inclusive space, the idea of coming out makes him feel dizzy.

Jimmy keeps leaning on Dan and Dan doesn’t freeze at the touch. He smiles and looks into those bright green eyes and lets himself feel what he never allowed himself to, before. The feelings are so much deeper than physical attraction. It hurts, but Dan has to make himself feel them at some point. 

Jimmy dances and sings along to mid noughties anthems, seemingly oblivious to Dan’s revelation.

Come to think of it, he spent a lot of time oblivious to the feelings that Dan had thought were obvious during their time together. Then, he can’t really fault him for it. Dan hides behind walls, and they are harder to break through the closer you get. He distances himself so much that he even tricks himself to believe those lies. He should have expected that it works on other people, as well.

He tricked Jimmy. He broke his heart. And yet, right now, Jimmy is drunk and happy. He is dancing with his ex girlfriend, who seems to share his excitement. For the second time today, Dan feels overwhelmed by emotion. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realises that both times, those emotions have been happy ones, but the way his chest constricts feels too much like anxiety for Dan to really be able to take it in.

The bathroom is some kind of solace. He escapes there to gather himself. He even manages to fully hold back from crying. The stall’s walls are covered in obscene doodles and phone numbers. Dan breathes. He only needs another moment.

When the bathroom door opens, the pounding of the music is so much that Dan almost can’t breathe again. But, it is what he hears after that fully takes his breath away.

“Dan around?”

It is Chris. Dan hasn’t seen him at all tonight. He didn’t even know that he was here.

“Yeah,” Jimmy says. “I think he went to have a fag or something.”

Chris laughs.

“The cigarette kind,” Jimmy clarifies, but Dan can hear the smile on his face. “I think. Lucy didn’t exactly specify.”

“So presumptuous,” Chris says, with that mock flirty voice he sometimes uses. “We should go looking for him, yeah?”

Jimmy doesn’t say anything in response. There is some movement happening outside of Dan’s stall. The next thing that is said, is whispered. Dan can’t tell which one of them is speaking, but he makes out the word “okay”, and that it sounds like a question.

There is some rustling, some movement. Dan listens harder, but he doesn’t need to wonder long before the sounds become obvious. An unmistakable sound of wet, smacking lips moving together. Dan’s heart starts a riot. His stomach drops so quickly he feels sick. 

It doesn’t stop dropping. Dan wonders how far it can sink. He just knows that he is feeling the same fear of psychosis that he did when he was at a club last.

Jimmy and Chris are kissing and whispering and it doesn’t sound like it is their first time.

Any doubt Dan had about the realisation he made earlier today is wiped away. If there is something Dan understands, it is this. This entirely unjustified feeling of betrayal. He missed his shot. He really, truly missed out on something that could have been great, all because he was so fucked up he managed to trick himself into believing that whatever Jimmy felt for him wasn’t reciprocated.

It was. It really, truly was, and still is, reciprocated.

For a moment, the idea of giving up sounds appealing again. The amber lights are turning red and flashing and Dan can’t put a stop to them. 

Dan thinks of purple. A tear rolls down his cheek. 

“I want you.”

He can’t tell who says it. It doesn’t really matter, because the noise in response means the same thing.

“Let’s dance first.”

They leave. Dan grabs his phone with shaking hands, swipes it open, and clicks Morgan’s number.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Dreams by Fleetwood Mac  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)
> 
> I wanted to give a shout out to Vivi @cactilads on twitter because she posted **[[this drawing]](https://twitter.com/cactilads/status/1182740144064995328)** a couple days ago, inspired by the previous chapter. It is gorgeous, please go support her!!


	35. Chapter 35

It doesn’t take more than three beeps for Morgan to answer the call, but it is enough time for Dan to regret ringing her in the first place. His heart is in his throat. Beating, beating, beating.

“Chrome?”

The sound that comes out when Dan sighs is like a sob. He holds his breath.

“Dan?” Morgan says, suddenly alert. “What is going on?”

He only calls her in moments like this, these days. He only ever reaches out to friends when he is going through a panic. He clings and grabs and takes, never gives. Obviously, Jimmy wouldn’t hold out and wait for a person like that.

He should be with a person like Chris. A person that offers their distant friend of a friend to sleep over because he is wandering the streets alone like an insane person in the middle of the night.

Jimmy deserves to be with someone that has that much faith in the world.

“Nothing,” Dan says. “I don’t know.”

Morgan stays silent.

“I’m hiding in the bathroom in a gay club and I just heard my old fuck buddy make out with another guy.” Saying it makes it sound just as ridiculous as it is. “And I think…”

Dan’s breath shudders when he releases it, but this time he doesn’t sob. He feels drunker than a few glasses of wine warrants him to.

“I think I’m in love with him,” Dan says.

“Oh, Dan.”

Morgan’s voice is so empathetic. Normally, Dan would push that away. Like when Jimmy came over to his flat to check on him, and begged him to go out and see people instead of wallowing, because that is the type of person that Jimmy is. He didn’t get anything in return. He just got Dan’s stupid ‘I’m fine’ and ‘I’m sorry’ and a hug that was too intimate for the friendship they are trying to build after everything that has happened. All Dan really has to offer is confusion and mixed messages to the people around him.

He hugged Jimmy like that because he wanted to. In all of his uncertainty, Dan’s body knew what it wanted all along.

It might be the alcohol or it might just be Dan’s very real desperation, but he allows himself to feel a little bit comforted by Morgan’s sympathy.

“Yeah,” Dan says. “I’m an idiot.”

“You’re not,” Morgan says.

“I am,” Dan insists. “I’m a fucking idiot and my life is a chaotic mess that I’ll never get under control.”

The schedule, and therapy, and prescriptions, and part time sick leave. Dan is so, so careful not to spook the monster that resides inside of him and yet it never rests. It doesn’t matter what he does. Nothing helps.

Of fucking course wanting to live is a painful revelation for Dan. His life isn’t worth living.

Saying it out loud spurs him on. He doesn’t want to stop. It isn’t unlike his conversation with Haley earlier in the week. It felt good to say it then, and felt bad afterwards. Dan knows this but his already weak impulse control is even more damaged by his inebriation. Consequences be damned, Dan just wants to complain about _himself_ to another person. Because _himself_ doesn’t make sense, not even to Dan.

“I am always so behind on everything,” he says. “I’m turning into the type of person I wished I’d never become. Someone that’s flaky and unpredictable. I always feel the thing I’m supposed to feel when it’s too late to feel it.”

“Dan,” Morgan interjects.

“I fucking hate myself.”

Dan never yells. He hates yelling. When Dan yells, he sounds like Dad.

But Dan yells the words and breaks down crying. This isn’t like him. He doesn’t fucking do this.

“Dan,” Morgan says when Dan has managed to take a few breaths. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

Dan makes a disagreeing noise. He can’t speak right now.

“You might not feel okay,” Morgan goes on. “But none of the things you’re saying are true. They’re so… I just can’t believe you feel that way about yourself.”

Dan has his words back, but he doesn’t feel like using them. He has no idea what to say to that.

“I don’t know if you’re able to take it in, but you’re one of the best people I know. Everyone is drawn to you because you have such a nice, calming energy. I know a lot of people that make everyone else feel like shit and still, they only keep congratulating themselves. You’re one of the good ones, Dan. There is nothing to hate about you.”

A nice, calming energy. If Dan wasn’t feeling like shit right now, he would laugh.

“But I keep messing up,” is what Dan ends up responding.

“What do you mean?” Morgan asks. “What exactly did you do?”

“I kept leading Jimmy on,” Dan says.

“But you just told me you’re in love with him.”

Dan shuts his mouth.

“That doesn’t sound like leading someone on,” Morgan says.

“I broke it off, though,” Dan says. “I hurt him for no reason.”

“You didn’t know,” Morgan says. “You did what you thought was best for the circumstances that you were under at the time.”

Dan is almost annoyed. It makes sense, coming from Morgan. A very insistent, emotional part of Dan wants to argue. But it has no compelling argument against Morgan’s reasoning.

He was actually trying to make things better when he broke things off with Jimmy.

“Right?” Morgan presses.

She sounds so incredibly calm and patient that Dan is impressed, even through all of the thoughts swirling around in his brain.

“Right.”

It is reluctant, but he does agree. Breathing becomes a bit easier.

“Let’s talk about something else now,” Morgan decides. “Did you read Mason’s new fic?”

-

They end up talking for a while. Dan hears people come in and out of the bathroom, each person drunker than the next. With Morgan in his ear and Fall Whisperer on his mind, Dan breathes easier. Morgan is the one to wrap up the conversation, eventually. If Dan was the one to decide, he would have kept talking for hours. He is drunk and sad and he wants to talk to one of the few people that know about the one thing that has kept him above the surface during the hardest years of his life.

Leaving the bathroom pulls him into reality and all of its uncomfortable emotions. Some time must have passed, because the people in the club definitely seem drunker, looser, louder. Maybe it is just that Dan is sobering up. Regardless, he doesn’t want to be in a place with strange smells and flickering lights and bass heavy music.

He wants honey and citrus. He wants purple. He wants silence.

He gets none of that when he exits the building. It is quieter, but there is still noise. People are smoking and drinking and laughing. Dan forgets how to behave and feel like a normal person. Everything is overwhelming at the moment.

He is just about to turn the corner and leave when he hears Chris and Jimmy’s voices. He stops dead in his tracks, heart pounding, frozen to the spot. There are no approaching footsteps, though. The voices remain as distant as they were, and so Dan’s body comes loose.

Chris and Jimmy are standing by the side of the next building, in a secluded area leading down a dead end alley. If Dan stays by this building, on the other side of the corner, he can watch them without risking them seeing him.

He expects to see kissing and groping. He expects to hear filthy words exchanged, mouths loose from alcohol, nerves gone.

Instead, Dan watches as Chris takes Jimmy’s hand in his. They are standing close, faces shadowed. Dan can’t make out their facial expressions. He can’t make out their words. But the gentle touches speak loud enough.

Chris brings Jimmy’s knuckles to his lips and kisses them. Jimmy takes hold of his side. When Chris lets go of his hand, Jimmy brushes it against the side of Chris’s face.

This isn’t something you do with a fuck buddy. The lines were blurred between Dan and Jimmy, but neither Chris or Jimmy are as morally questionable as Dan is. This is more than friendship. It is more than lust. Dan watches from his spot on the other side of the corner in night time London. The sky is too polluted to really see the stars, but Dan thinks he can see some appear as Jimmy moves in closer to Chris. He holds him gently by the back of the head and leans in. Their lips touch. They stutter. As if taken aback by the feeling, they seem almost afraid to give in to it.

Jimmy leans back in. This time, they don’t pull back. Their mouths move together. It is slow, but Dan thinks he can see some urgency. As Jimmy clings to the material of Chris’s jacket, and Chris’s hands move up to grab at Jimmy’s hair.

Jimmy never kissed Dan in that way.

This is something entirely different. When Dan and Jimmy tried and tried, every feeling was real. Jimmy meant what he said and Dan didn’t mean what he said. They ran in opposite directions, at different paces, reaching for each other but never coming close enough.

What Dan sees between Chris and Jimmy is symbiosis. They aren’t running. They’re taking tentative step after tentative step side by side, hands joined, and there is no question about either of them leaving.

Dan feels sick to his stomach.

It would have been one thing if it was just a hookup. Dan would still feel hurt, but he would have had a foot in. Now, he has hardly even gone a day of understanding that the reason he hasn’t stopped thinking about Jimmy, the reason that everything Jimmy does hurts more than when anyone else does it, is because Dan isn’t over him.

Phil must have asked because he knew.

“Dan?”

When Chris looks at him, Dan freezes. Jimmy turns. Their faces are shadowed and Dan doesn’t want to see whatever remorse or anger they are holding.

Thankfully, in moments like these, there is nothing behind Dan’s eyes. He detaches so quickly that it makes him feel dizzy. He watches from the spectator’s point of view and in from distant gaze he sees what is really happening. Two people that are in love, and the one person that has been slowing down the progression of that all along.

“Hi,” Dan ends up saying.

He smiles. He does a two finger salute. Like an idiot, he mimics what he thinks a normal person that isn’t in love with one of the guys he just watched making out would do. Jimmy approaches him and once he does, Chris follows. Their pinkies are linked, pushed behind their bodies to go unnoticed. Dan looks back up at their faces.

“Where are the girls?” he asks.

He should set the precedent here. He doesn’t want to put it on either of them. This situation can’t really get more awkward than it already is.

“They went back home,” Chris says. “We haven’t seen you for an hour or something.”

“Are you okay?” Jimmy asks.

His eyes are intense, trained on Dan’s, the same way that he has looked at him so many times before. Dan always hides. He closes his eyes. He detaches. Jimmy doesn’t actually know shit about him, besides what he likes to do under the covers. Yet still, Dan thinks he can see the same type of affection in his gaze that he always does. It makes Dan want to cry.

“I’m okay,” Dan says.

Chris glances at Jimmy and Jimmy glances back. Dan wants to disappear.

“We were thinking about going back to Chris’s,” Jimmy says.

He puts his arm around Dan’s shoulders and urges him to walk. Jimmy’s smile is vibrant. Chris walks with them by Dan’s other side.

“Everyone raves about pre-gaming,” Chris says. “I prefer post-gaming, personally.”

Jimmy laughs. Dan pretends to.

“We won’t post-game without you,” Jimmy says.

Dan chuckles, and this time it isn’t entirely put on.

“Alright, sure,” he says. “We’re already on our way anyway.”

Jimmy pats his shoulder.

“Good,” he says.

They walk. The street lights flicker on the way to the tube station. As Dan looks up, he notices that they aren’t all amber. There is at least one, shining bright pearly white. It doesn’t flicker, not even once, for the time during which Dan regards it.

Chris snakes an arm around Dan’s waist. They walk like an awkward trio, stumbling, until they all end up laughing. When Dan’s stomach starts to cramp, he realises that now he is laughing for real.

In his mind, Dan turns over an amber crystal. He dusts it off.

It changes colour. As it does, the one that appears in his other hand changes colour, too. He isn’t alone in the sinister, dark, amber lit cave. There are two crystals shining next to him and lighting the way. 

It goes easy, fusing them together. They are like magnets, drawn closer by the energy between them, just waiting to merge. They become instantly stronger. Dan can feel it. Maybe he was the one that was supposed to put them together. Maybe he didn’t actually prolong the process, but rather, the one that made it at all possible in the first place.

At that moment, Dan decides that he won’t put them away. He won’t save them for later. It seems obvious now, what their purpose is, and what it has been all along.

Dan finds himself sporting a hesitant smile, still shaken up by tonight’s turn of events, but as he sits on the tube with Chris and Jimmy he returns from the outside and once he comes into the present, he holds on for dear life.

It’s easier to do, with these crystals by his side.

-

In the beginning of Fall Whisperer, you are faced with a choice.

The second time Dan played it, he was well aware of all the strange shadows that lurked and made themselves known only ten or fifteen minutes into the game. This time, they didn’t exactly spook him. Dan could tell which dialogue boxes came from the shadows, and which ones were his character’s thoughts. It enabled him to notice things he hadn’t, the first time around. He could take in what was actually happening in a much more comprehensible way.

The shadows were still unnerving. The eerie music and strange nightmares, the sudden noises, the manic fear in your own character. Dan still expected them, but this time he knew that they weren’t dangerous. The pleas from the Shadow Realm aren’t meant to instill fear, but they sound scary since the communication between realms becomes so distorted. Their voices end up sounding aggressive. 

They aren’t actually shadows, but people from a different reality, trying their hardest to connect the two worlds.

This time, Dan made the choice of going to the cave first, instead of the garden. As he approached the cave’s entrance, the same anxious thoughts from his own character appeared on the screen.

_I know this is what they want, but what if they’re lying?_

_I don’t know if they’re good. I’ve never known if they were good._

_All they do is startle me. That doesn’t feel good._

What was different, this time, was that Dan wasn’t presented with the option of going to the garden instead. The cave was waiting to be entered and Dan was sure of what he wanted to do. The game seemed to know that, just as well.

Like the first time he played, the same anxieties that appeared when he entered the garden appeared when he entered the cave. The same fears of the possibility that the shadows are evil and mean harm, and then the consideration that they may just be lost souls, looking for guidance.

Dan walked through the amber lit rooms of the cave. It felt so different to him now. The cave seemed a lot more sinister. He had gotten used to the rainbow of colours in the cave from his other save. The absence of them got to him a little bit as he walked through the quiet, echoey cave levels.

Eventually, he found White. 

White was digging something out of the cave wall, busy, not noticing Dan. It was strange, knowing everything White had been through and about his relationship with Dye, while watching this other version of White, the person that he was before everything. Dan took a step forward, but as soon as he did, White snapped around and aimed his bow and arrow at him.

Dan took another step forward.

White fired the arrow. The game over screen appeared, asking if the player would like to try again.

Dan hadn’t been ready for that. He was under the assumption that White just wanted anyone that could help to help, and that he didn’t view people from this realm as a threat. He hadn’t even considered White’s ability to kill for real, rather than to simply stun shadows.

Choosing yes, he would like to try again, Dan appeared outside of the cave again. This time, the game reminded him of the fact that he could go to the garden instead.

He felt compelled to, momentarily, but then again he knew that White wasn’t dangerous. Dan walked inside again, this time uncomfortably aware of the fact that if he hadn’t gone to the garden first last time, he wouldn’t have been under any illusion that White’s moral compass wasn’t a bit damaged. 

When White aimed his bow and arrow at Dan this time, Dan stayed still. He didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t have his own weapon or shield yet. He was defenseless, and making any move would just make White kill him again.

Staying still turned out to be the correct choice. After only half a minute or so, a dialogue box showed up of White laughing, and saying “thought so”.

Dan’s shadow was quiet in White’s presence. White took a step forward. His portrait in the dialogue box was of him squinting, suspicious.

“Were you sent here?” he asked.

“Yes,” Dan’s character responded.

There was no option but to be truthful.

“By whom?” White asked.

This time, Dan’s character stayed silent. White’s suspicious expression changed into something sympathetic.

“You can see them, huh?”

He sat down next to Dan’s character with a sigh. Dan sat down as well.

“Yes…?”

“I do, too,” White said. “It never stops.”

“Why?” Dan’s character asked. “I thought I was the only one?

Dan was reminded that in this point of the story, Dan’s character still thought that he was the only one that could hear and see the shadows. This was supposed to be a moment of revelation, but all Dan could feel was an aching affection for White.

“Did you lie and say you couldn’t hear them anymore?” White asked.

“Yeah?”

“So do the rest of us.”

Dan’s character scratched his head.

“I thought only a few people in recorded history had this ability,” he said.

“Some of us just shut our mouths sooner,” White said.

In the Garden version, the story isn’t as straight forward. White wants to explain, unlike Dye.

Dan’s character stayed quiet.

“Hm,” White said. “You didn’t shut your mouth soon enough, did you?” 

Always patronising. Playing the second time, it made Dan smile.

“You’re Dan?”

Dan knew that his character was known as this generation’s whisperer, the one person with the ability to speak with the other realm past their tenth birthday, but in the garden version his fame wasn’t at all prevalent like this. Dye and White rarely calls the player by the name they typed in at the start of the game. If Dan had chosen the cave the first time, this would have scared him.

It still scared him now, just a little bit.

“In the flesh,” Dan’s character responded.

“Shit,” White whistled. “I’m sorry.”

The aching affection grew larger inside of Dan, then.

“What are you doing here?” Dan’s character asked.

“Getting crystals,” White said. “Trying to figure out how to pass to the other side.”

Apparently, when you don’t meet Dye first, there isn’t as much time spent on trying to figure out what White is doing and whether it works or not.

“Isn’t that what you were planning to do?” White asked. “That’s what they always tell us to do.”

He means the shadows. For a first time player, this conversation must appear quite vague, but Dan knew exactly where White was coming from.

“I haven’t received instructions,” Dan’s character responded. “I try not to listen. But I couldn’t really stop myself from coming here, this time.”

White’s portrait’s expression turned serious.

“They’re going to ask for crystals soon enough, and you have to obey,” he said. “Stop ignoring them. It doesn’t work.”

Dan was stunned. After knowing everything that happens in the game, White’s honesty was as scary as it was refreshing.

“Believe me, I know,” White added.

At this point, White got up. Dan followed suit. White lead him through the cave, telling him that they needed to gather crystals and figure out how to use them and why. 

Dan found it strange that White said that, since he was aware of what the crystals were meant for. He was just waiting for Dye to go along with it and help him out. But White didn’t tell Dan’s character that. As always, he protects Dye. He protects the one he loves.

What White did explain, was the bow and arrow and the plants attached to the spiky end. He told him that they caused the shadows to dematerialise and go back to the Shadow Realm. This, at least, was similar to what Dan learned in the garden.

After some tutorial bits of Dan getting the opportunity to practise shooting arrows, Dan’s character turned to White.

“Have you ever been there?” he asked.

White scoffed.

“What?” His portrait looked confused. “No? Have you?”

The response from Dan’s character was unnerving.

“I don’t know.”

Because Dan had played before. There was a level of meta here that made Dan’s interest in the game deepen. He had thought he was already proper obsessed, but considering timelines and the game’s replayability, he felt just as impressed as he did the first time he played. 

Seagull was genius, plain and simple. Dan hadn’t known much about him at the time, but his admiration for his work made him want to find out everything there was to know. Sadly, there wasn’t much to find out about him online, but that didn’t discourage Dan at all. Instead, he found himself admiring the fact that Seagull values his own privacy so much that he doesn’t care to be known as who he really is.

Thinking back now, next to Chris and Jimmy on the tube, Dan feels a change. Maybe this is his own opportunity to start over, inside the cave. Back in his parents house he had tried and tried, but his feet had been bound by familial responsibilities and his own mental illness. 

He isn’t restrained anymore. He isn’t as scared.

He already knows what is inside the cave.

This time around, he won’t lie to himself. He has grown well aware of the fact that his brain plays tricks on him. He knows that, despite trying to convince himself otherwise, he does have feelings. Only, his way of dealing with them is to pretend like they aren’t there. He has to stop pretending.

It is easier said than done, to remember that during his worst moments. When he is alone, it is all dark, and Dan can’t question the lies.

Dan isn’t alone now. He won’t lie to himself. He is still feeling hurt, knowing Jimmy isn’t and won’t be his. That doesn’t mean he can’t be happy for him. Dan finds it hard not to feel happy for him, watching him exchange glances with Chris. They’re going at the same pace and they have something, something that Dan can’t name but he recognises it because-

Because-

Dan’s glass heart rattles as it accelerates. He doesn’t want to lie to himself this time around. But he won’t pressure himself into facing something before he feels ready to. He might know what the crystals are meant for now, but he is still figuring out how to use them. When he does, he will feel better able to handle these types of things.

There is no rush. He doesn’t have a time limit anymore. He won’t enter the darkness and fulfill the promise he made all those years ago. He has all the time in the world.

Fear exists somewhere still, knowing that he doesn’t have an out anymore. But there is less constriction. The idea of wanting to live and not knowing what to do with that want or that life, has taken away all the good feelings he thought were supposed to come with not wanting to die.

Dan hasn’t yet considered the fact that he isn’t actually _done_. He isn’t on the other end of the finish line, holding a trophy, proclaiming victory in finally defeating his own suicidal thought process. He might be past that, but in life, there is no finish line. There are only thresholds to step over, but once Dan has passed them that doesn’t mean he won’t ever fall backwards again. 

There is upkeep to deal with. When the garden isn’t used as a toxic, avoidant thing, its existence teaches a different lesson. With his mental illness, Dan knows that new revelations are fragile. He has to tend to them, protect himself, to make sure that they are in full bloom. He has to take care of them so that they don’t wither away.

Dan doesn’t have to give his life meaning because he still has things to do. He is still learning. He has experiences ahead of himself, people to strengthen his bond with, games to play. He doesn’t need to rush. He has all the time in the world.

Dan has all the time in the world to learn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Lights by SOHN  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	36. Chapter 36

There is a stiffness in Chris and Jimmy’s proximity to one another. As they’re sitting next to each other on the tube, Chris reaches for Jimmy’s hand. At the last second, Chris’s movement stutters and he pulls his hand back to lie, unsatisfied and awkward, on his own lap. 

Part of Dan wants to fast forward to the point where this isn’t an issue. He feels so adamant about wanting Chris and Jimmy to act naturally with him that he almost forgets that he isn’t over Jimmy yet, and that actually watching them give in to their temptations hurts. 

He has to focus on the crystals. On their own, Chris and Jimmy haven’t been able to really help him. Together, fused, they seem confident in leading Dan to Chris and Phil’s flat without making it a big deal. It is quite a feat. Dan scares easily.

Sometimes, Dan feels so self aware that he shouldn’t still have problems. He wonders how he can claim to know so much about why he has issues when he still struggles with them. Recovery isn’t a linear thing, Susanne has told him. It doesn’t really make sense. It is the most frustrating thing in the world.

The three of them joke around and laugh all the way up the stairs. Jimmy pretends to be drunker than he is. He mocks falling over and slurring and for some reason, it is the funniest thing Dan has ever seen. He holds on to Chris’s arm not to fall forward from laughing.

Chris unlocks the front door, and the moment they step inside the flat, they pick up on the energy in it. It makes them straighten up a little, and attempt to be quiet.

Phil and PJ are sitting on the sofa, entirely focused on something on a large tablet on PJ’s lap. They don’t look up when they hear the door open as Dan, Chris and Jimmy stumble into the hallway, all gangly limbs and poorly held back laughter. Dan feels like a teenager, trying to be quiet after a night out as not to wake up sleeping parents.

“Can you two go to Chris’s room?” PJ asks once they come inside the living room. “We’re trying to work.”

He doesn’t look up from the tablet. Phil is sitting closely, glasses on and hair messy, wearing a hoodie and pyjama bottoms. Dan admires the pearly white skin that was all his only a few hours ago. He hasn’t seen Phil be this engrossed in something apart from Dan before. He only feels a tad bit voyeuristic, drinking in the sight of the focused crease between Phil’s eyebrows, and the tip of his tongue that is poking out from the corner of his mouth.

“Rude,” Chris says. “So Dan gets to stay and watch you work?”

Phil’s and PJ’s heads snap up so quickly in such a synchronized manner that the three of them start to lose it again. Dan doesn’t miss the way Phil’s face lights up. His eyes meet Dan’s and the laughter calms. The focused crease on Phil’s forehead smooths out and he smiles. Dan’s face goes so hot so fast that he forces himself to pay attention to PJ instead.

“Hi Dan,” PJ says, turning to sit with his back against the arm rest. “This is top secret stuff, so excuse my bluntness when I kindly ask you to fuck off to Chris’s room.”

“PJ,” Phil says. “Don’t.”

Jimmy laughs. “He can take it.”

A feeling of deja vu hits Dan. He can’t really place it.

“Doesn’t mean he has to,” Phil argues.

He looks at Dan the entire time. In his peripheral, Phil’s eyes searches for his. Dan can’t bring himself to look back. Phil isn’t usually this definitive. He takes charge when they are in a group, but he doesn’t directly tell people to stop what they are doing.

Something rubs Dan’s back. Jimmy scratches his fingernails idly between Dan’s shoulder blades.

Dan sighs, leaning his head on Jimmy’s shoulder. Jimmy wraps his arms around him.

“Alright, sorry,” PJ says, still not looking up.

“We should wrap up, anyway, right?” Phil asks.

At this, PJ does look back up. He would’ve looked less surprised if a dinosaur suddenly appeared in front of them, Dan thinks. He breathes in the scent of Jimmy’s cologne and breathes out a laugh at the mental image.

“ _You_ really want---,” PJ splutters. His voice goes uncharacteristically high and flustered.

He stares at Phil in disbelief, then turns to look right at Dan. He shuts his mouth.

“We’re having guests ‘round,” Phil reasons.

Dan finally dares to look at him now, but this time, it seems Phil is the one to make an effort not to look at Dan.

PJ snorts a laugh.

“Chris and Jimmy are alw-”

Again, his mouth snaps shut and he throws Dan an awkward glance.

Phil ignores him.

“It isn’t that late,” he says. “We deserve a break. I’ll entertain.”

“Does that mean popcorn?” Chris asks.

“Obviously,” Phil says.

“And beer?” Jimmy asks.

Dan watches Jimmy and Chris grin at each other like a couple of kids that just tricked their parents into agreeing to their ingenious plan.

As if playing the part of the exasperated parent, Phil nods over at PJ.

“If PJ says so.”

Jimmy, Chris and Phil turn to him with equally pleading eyes.

“Fine,” PJ concedes, rolling his eyes. “Whatever. You go do that if you want. I’m going to finish the draft if Phil would stop looking over my bloody shoulder, thank you very much.”

There is so much genuine annoyance in PJ’s tone that Dan has to laugh. Chris and Jimmy have already zoomed away to the kitchen, so quickly that Dan barely notices the sudden absence of Jimmy’s arms around him.

“You’re like an old married couple,” Dan blurts out.

Seemingly knocked out of the trance of their silent communication, Phil and PJ both look back at Dan. This time, Dan locks eyes with Phil. Dan’s heart picks up, beating anxiously. Phil’s smile manages to soothe it.

“Work with your best friend for ten years,” PJ says, voice flat. “Then you’ll understand.”

He shakes his head like he can’t believe he puts himself through it. Phil’s smile widens. This time he directs it at PJ.

“Aw, I’m your best friend?” he teases.

The expected retort doesn’t come. Instead, PJ allows a soft smile in return for Phil’s.

As if on cue, Chris and Jimmy return with a tray filled with beer and a bowl of popcorn.

“Are you entertaining us or not?” Chris asks, relieving the room of its confusing tension.

“Sit down and I’ll figure something out,” Phil says as he gets up from the sofa.

Chris puts the tray down on the table and sits down next to Jimmy on the sofa opposite of the one PJ is occupying. 

“You too, Dan,” Phil says.

The look he throws him is so charming and amused. For a moment, Phil’s expression is completely unguarded in its excitement that Dan feels an urge to step forward and pinch his cute little cheek. There is something so very purple about Phil right now, and Dan is drunk enough to let himself think that.

Dan doesn’t trust himself to speak, and so he mimics a soldier march as he makes way to sit next to PJ. When he looks up to see Phil’s reaction, his face is guarded again, but he laughs. Dan fights the smile that comes so quickly that he has to bite the inside of his cheek to at least half way suppress the unhinged joy it would express otherwise.

He reaches for a beer. Phil goes to his room, and Dan listens as he opens a couple drawers in search of something. He gets distracted by PJ’s sigh, as he puts his tablet to the side and grabs a beer himself. Dan thinks he sees something purple and green in his peripheral before the screen fades to black.

-

The entertainment, courtesy of Phil, turns out to be a board game. It isn’t just any board game though, but one that Phil came up with on his own. The rest of the guys seem so used to this that Dan holds back his initial surprise, and how impressed he is.

As Phil hands out a piece of paper and a pen each, Dan’s stomach flutters. Of course. Of course Phil invents his own games and makes his friends play them. Something about it is so incredibly _Phil_ , so incredibly purple.

Dan is so swept up with watching the display of excitement on Phil’s face as he takes a breath to explain the rules that Dan nearly misses that Jimmy puts his hand on Chris’s knees on the other sofa. Once he notices he can’t stop noticing. Phil explains the rules, but Dan can’t hear them. The only thing that exists is this apparently solid thing that is building between Jimmy and Chris. 

Dan makes the mistake of glancing at Jimmy’s face because when he does, Jimmy catches him. They look at each other and for a moment, the drunken banter and playfulness is wiped from their faces and in its place stands a naked honesty that makes Dan want to disappear. It dawns on Jimmy. Dan can see the moment it happens, not unlike the time Dan blamed his quickly shifting moods on his ‘bad brain’. Jimmy gets it.

The sofa dips as Phil sits down between Dan and PJ. 

“Everyone got it?” he asks.

There is music playing from the speakers that Dan didn’t notice was turned on until now.

There’s a hum of scattered agreement. Phil’s eyes land on Dan. Reality hurts right now. _Knowing_ hurts right now. Before, Dan would have already detached, and removed himself from the moment mentally in lieu of doing it physically. Right now, Dan couldn’t detach if he tried to. Phil is full of intrigue and it keeps Dan attached to the here and now, even if the here and now requires him to grit his teeth to stand the pain.

Dan isn’t sure if he likes it or not until Phil offers a small smile. Then it becomes obvious. There are some things that are worth sticking around for. There are some people that are worth attaching to.

The rules of the game has to be explained a couple more times even as they are playing for everyone to actually get them. They aren’t that difficult to grasp, but that doesn’t stop three kind-of-drunk guys from misunderstanding them time and time again.

In the end, they all seem to have understood;

They have to come up with four questions together, put down the numbers one to four on their piece of paper as well as their name, then hand their piece of paper to the person sitting to their left.

The question is something the person must answer about the person whose paper you’re holding, and so the question must work to be answered about a person.

They write down the questions on a piece of paper, and they are free to choose whichever one they would like to answer about the person whose paper they’re holding. In the end, they get their own papers back to read the answers out and decide on a winner. Phil encourages them to be funny with it. Then, the person has to guess who answered it, and points are distributed accordingly, both to the winner and to the person, if they guessed correctly.

Trying to be funny through the confusing push and pull of emotions between Phil and Jimmy, while drunk, proves to be easier than Dan thought it would. He is relieved to finally focus on something other than all of the people around him. He has to cover his mouth not to laugh at the ones he comes up with.

There is an ease around the coffee table. They aren’t too rowdy but quips and giggles are exchanged, and if Dan focuses on those, he finds that he is actually enjoying himself. Maybe coming up with games is a writer thing, he thinks. Maybe at some point he’ll get the courage to ask.

Dan’s paper returns to him.

**Questions:**

1) _If they were a type of weather, what would they be?_  
2) _If they were famous, what would they be famous for?_  
3) _What is their secret fetish?_  
4) _What were they like in school?_

After struggling for a bit to make out the almost unintelligible chicken scratch writing on the answer sheet, Dan is able to read what they said about him.

 **Answers:**  
1) _A storm_  
2) _The world champion of ignoring text messages_  
3) _Stray socks_  
4) _That guy that always showed up half an hour late and still managed to get straight A’s_

“Stray socks?” is the first thing Dan thinks of asking after reading out the answers.

“Don’t tell me someone here found his cum sock,” PJ says, head already in his hands from exasperation.

Dan shakes his head.

“What am I, twelve?” he says. “I don’t have a bloody cum sock.”

“You’d probably have to get it checked out in that case,” Phil quips.

“What?” Dan asks.

Then he gets it. He shudders in disgust, swatting his paper at Phil’s shoulder.

“ _Phil!_ ” he whines.

He holds back his laugh. It is hard to do, as Phil giggles so hard his face goes red and he bends over. Dan spends this time pushing his shoulder some more as he clenches his jaw to stop himself from smiling.

“I’m innocent!” Phil proclaims once he gets his breath back. “You were the one that said ‘bloody’!”

“Who the fuck says ‘bloody’ literally?”

“Oh, God, stop,” Jimmy laughs. “I don’t want to imagine a bloody cum sock anymore.”

All of them shiver in disgust.

“So you wanted to, for a bit?” Chris asks, a wide grin on his face.

“Don’t kink shame me,” Jimmy retorts.

It takes a while for them to get off the topic of the sock comment. All the while, Dan takes the opportunity to push and poke Phil for every gross thing he says.

“Such a troll,” Dan says, shaking his head.

“So that’s the winner then?” PJ asks.

“No,” Dan says immediately. “I don’t know? Stray socks? I still don’t know what it even means.”

He thinks he catches Chris giggling, exchanging a look with Phil.

“I think the winner is the weather one, actually,” he says.

“Lame,” Jimmy comments.

“It’s the most accurate one,” Dan reasons.

Jimmy, Chris, PJ, and Phil all look at him, waiting for an explanation. Dan squirms internally. Answering that would be too revealing, and the spectator has been having a field day with him already.

“Yeah?” PJ urges him.

Dan swallows, worrying the piece of paper between his fingers.

“I don’t know, I’d say I’m a storm,” he shrugs. “Unpredictable, chaotic. Leaving messes everywhere I go.”

Dan feels the disagreement in the room before anyone says anything.

“Your flat is the cleanest fucking thing I’ve ever seen,” Jimmy says. “It’s almost scary.”

“I didn’t mean those kinds of messes,” Dan says.

He hates himself as soon as he says it.

“I don’t know if that’s what they meant with that answer.”

Phil says it so quickly that Dan doesn’t even bother wondering whether he did it to stop the awkward moment from happening.

“Alright, Phil, it was you, we get it,” PJ grins.

“I’m not saying that!”

PJ gives him a look.

“What else would it mean, anyway?” Dan says.

He attempts to seem casual about it but the curiosity is eating him up from the inside so quickly it is surely making its way out in the small smile Dan is powerless to push back.

“I don’t know,” Phil grins, looking Dan straight in the eyes. “I didn’t write it.”

Dan arches an eyebrow and glances at the others.

“Alright, well, that answer wins and I reckon it’s Jimmy.”

“Wrong!” Jimmy cheers.

“It was me!” Phil squeaks with a laugh.

“Of course it was bloody you,” Dan grumbles, sitting back with his arms crossed tight over his chest.

Phil nudges his shoulder until he relaxes.

“That means we both get a point,” Phil says. “You would’ve had two if you guessed correctly.”

Dan groans in exaggerated disappointment. He doesn’t actually care in the least. The only thing he actually cares about is making Phil laugh, which he does. Dan forces himself to look at something other than Phil. There is something childlike and excited to him now that is the complete opposite of the way he immediately took charge when they arrived.

They spend a good while reading out and laughing about answers. It is a nice evening as long as Dan focuses on purple, on contrasts. He doesn’t succeed the whole time. Every time him and Jimmy speak directly to one another, things feel off, and weird, and Dan is sure that Jimmy must know. He must realise that Dan is an idiot and missed his shot. One part of Dan is happy for him, even hoping that he takes pleasure in Dan’s pain. Another knows that he wouldn’t. Because Jimmy stayed and held him and tried to make sense of what didn’t even make sense to Dan at the time.

If only he could kiss him, and hold him, and apologise for everything he did wrong when they were together. But the knee touches have evolved to hand holding and Dan wonders if that is why Chris asked, that time when they all hung out right after Dan and Jimmy had decided to stop having sex. Come to think of it, Dan doesn’t know when this started. He doesn’t know what Jimmy and Chris had been doing when Chris caught Dan by Jimmy’s building a week ago. Dan’s stomach clenches with anxiety. Obviously, they had sex. And Chris walked out of there to find his romantic interest’s pseudo-ex. Dan had been pathetic, looking for comfort from the one person he knew could give it to him, from the person he didn’t even realise that he loves.

The crystals flicker with amber. Dan doesn’t exactly know how they changed colour in the first place. He doesn’t know how to stop them from going between white and amber and white and amber until he feels dizzy just looking at them.

Phil ends up winning the game. By the time they are done playing, it’s half two in the morning.

They are sitting back; Chris and Jimmy conversing while PJ picks his tablet back up, ready to get back to work. Phil doesn’t join in. PJ throws him a look, just as incredulous as he was earlier. Dan finds it curious that Phil is so adamant on not talking about his job, when it is such a shock to the other people around him that he would ever miss out on an opportunity to work.

They are all getting tired. Dan rubs his eyes, and when he looks back up he watches Chris get up from the sofa and drag Jimmy into his bedroom. He isn’t saying anything and Jimmy doesn’t look back at Dan. The door swings shut. The crystals have left him to deal with the darkness alone.

Dan’s stomach drops. It feels like it did in the bathroom stall, when it kept dropping, and Dan was on the cusp of spiralling. Somewhere in his drunken mind, Dan remembers that he should keep holding on to the moment even if it hurts.

A hand covers Dan’s. Dan relaxes from where he had been unknowingly digging his fingernails into the armrest. He looks into Phil’s eyes, searching for yellow. 

He ends up finding purple. Phil threads his fingers with Dan’s. 

Dan isn’t actually alone in the darkness. Phil shines the brightest, after all.

“You can sleep here if you want to,” Phil says.

Dan glances at Chris’s bedroom door.

“I don’t know.”

He doesn’t want to wake up in a place he won’t remember he fell asleep in, and he doesn’t want to have to rush home to take his meds in the morning.

But he doesn’t want to be alone, either.

“What’s up?” Phil whispers.

He is looking down at their hands. Dan, for once, feels grateful to not have to look straight into his eyes. 

PJ is working quietly, seemingly oblivious to the world around him. Dan takes a steadying breath and decides to be honest.

“I have to take my meds in the morning,” he shrugs. “Don’t want to have to get on the tube first thing.”

“Sure,” Phil says.

A loud, painfully obvious sex noise is heard then, from Chris’s bedroom. It makes all three of them turn and stare at the door.

“Shut up!” PJ yells, throwing a pillow at the door.

Dan would laugh if he didn’t feel sick to his stomach. He has heard that moan before.

“Come on,” Phil says, standing up.

He leads Dan to the hallway by the hand. There is a riot of giggles coming from the other side of Chris’s bedroom door.

Dan knows that it is funny, but all he wants to do is cry. Each sound from that room is like a stab in the gut, a reminder of what a shitty person he is. The spectator laughs at him. Dan is just a child, always wanting what he can’t have.

“They’re right assholes sometimes,” Phil says.

“It’s fine,” Dan says, but even as he tries to, he can’t fake a smile. “They’re just drunk.”

Phil tilts his head and peers into Dan’s frail glass heart as it trembles.

“How long have they been together?” Dan asks.

He doesn’t want to know. The question comes out of nowhere.

“Dan.”

Phil squeezes his hand.

“Why did you say I was a storm?” Dan asks instead.

There is a new kind of hesitation in Phil’s eyes, but it isn’t the kind that looks scary. He gives a sheepish smile and shrugs.

“You said it was accurate,” he says, evading the question completely.

“You said my take on it was inaccurate,” Dan corrects him.

Phil slides his fingers between Dan’s. Dan’s heart beats harder.

“I think we have different opinions on storms,” Phil says. “You see a mess and I see…”

He stops himself. He looks down at their hands. 

Dan would push, but suddenly everything seems so frail that he barely dares to say a word lest the world crumble around them. One part of him wants it to; to fall into a void with Phil by his side.

“Do you want to sleep at mine?” Dan asks.

There isn’t a single flash of surprise on Phil’s face.

“Yeah.”

Dan smiles. Phil remains purple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: I Feel The Weight by Miike Snow  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	37. Chapter 37

The cobblestone streets are alight with amber.

Dan pays them no mind. London is a crisscross of anxious alleys, places to fall apart. Polluted skies reveal only slivers of the night. The moon is covered in dark grey clouds, but somehow, light manages to shine through.

It directs Dan’s attention towards Phil. In polluted moonlight, Phil’s contrasts are striking. He glances back at Dan. The colours of Phil’s eyes aren’t as distinguishable when they are surrounded by amber. Dan’s mind is drained of past mistakes and Phil reaches out between them, palm up. Between the rows of buildings towards the Underground, they are granted a few moments of privacy. Dan takes Phil’s hand. They walk in a silence that is only that; silence. The noise of the city circles them but Dan focuses on the sound of Phil’s breath, of Phil’s steps.

It is easy to follow along.

They let go of each other’s hands when the threats of Saturday night walkers become real. Dan pushes his hands inside his coat pockets and stares forward, at the spot they were standing on, another night. Traffic lights flicker past it. Dan remembers Phil’s face acting as a canvas. He is a natural at soaking up the colours, and at soaking up the light. He holds on to them and offers them to the people around him.

Dan’s achromatic shape has only had temporary splashes of colour that evaporate as soon as they try to take hold. There are two patches that are black, like a void. Dan knows exactly who they belong to. One of them is trying to change. It crackles and spits, leaving a small piece open to something else. Dan can only peek at the colours inside for now. At least he knows that the void isn’t a void, but a cover of dark that he can peel away like the dried acrylic paint on a painting. He will, one day, he thinks. When he is ready.

There is a third patch, that looks different from the rest. It has depth and brightness and colours that swirl together in a rainbow spiral. It isn’t always there. Like a switch, the light can go out, and Dan almost forgets that it was ever there in the first place. It doesn’t take a lot for him to switch it back on. All he needs to do is boot up Fall Whisperer and immerse himself into a world of understanding, where emotions don’t seem as confronting because they are packaged in beauty.

On the tube, they find a secluded couple of seats in the very back. For a few minutes, they get to sit quietly and hold hands without the fear of assessing eyes. For the time being, Dan doesn’t think about what it means. All he knows is that he has allowed his heart to open up and reveal truths he doesn’t want to know but, at the same time, enable him to find a real connection. It is a fragile place to be in. Dan lets Phil hold him, wrap a hand around his heart to protect it from harm.

“I meant that you’re exciting.”

After such a long stretch of mutual silence, Dan startles slightly at the sound of Phil’s voice. He remains silent, as they get off the tube and take the escalator up to the surface.

“Storm?” Dan asks.

Phil nods.

“Exciting is another word for chaotic,” Dan says. “So yeah.”

“I like a bit of chaos,” Phil says.

He must not have seen a lot of chaos to say something like that.

“Trust me, you don’t,” Dan says.

The walk to Dan’s flat isn’t long. It feels like it is taking longer right now, as if Dan is fully seeing the surroundings that he usually only passes by. October trees line the pavement, shedding yellow leaves in droves. There are quite a few that are still holding on to the branches, but November is approaching, about to leave all of the trees bare.

Phil takes Dan’s hand.

“I do,” he says.

There is naked vulnerability in his voice. Dan shuts his mouth. Phil’s eyes soften, the sharp edge of the moment rounding. Dan dares to smile. Right now only Phil exists, with his monochrome contrasts, black hair and white skin, to the backdrop of colourful, half naked October trees.

They end up in bed together as soon as they take off their shoes and coats. Phil is the first one to fall backwards into bed, holding his arms out with a grin.

Dan’s flat has never felt so warm.

They laugh for no reason other than the all consuming sense of freedom that the solitude of Dan’s apartment brings them. Stale, monochrome, empty, impersonal. But when Phil is here, covering Dan’s belongings with memories, they become alive with colour.

Dan rolls into Phil’s arms and settles his face into the side of his neck. Phil breathes out. They seem to realise, at the same time, that this isn’t something that they usually do. As they so naturally position themselves together, it seems almost wrong for it to feel so right, and easy, and uncomplicated.

“Are you tired?” Dan asks.

“Yeah,” Phil says.

Dan is resting his head on Phil’s shoulder. They look into each other’s eyes.

“You can borrow something to sleep in,” Dan says. “From the drawer.”

He gestures to the drawer on the opposite wall, next to the kitchenette. Phil moves slowly, reluctant to leave their shared, warm little world in bed.

-

“Did you go to York?”

Dan pulls a striped, oversized t-shirt over his head. He feels almost naked, wearing only a pair of black, soft shorts underneath. 

“No,” Dan says, confused. “I did go to Manchester University for a short period, though, but I dropped-”

Phil turns around, wearing a bright green hoodie with bold letters covering the front. For a second, Phil disappears and the owner of the hoodie replaces him, turning Dan’s heart into ice.

“It’s Jimmy’s,” Dan says before he thinks better of it.

Phil is silent.

Dan could die.

“I guess he won’t mind if I borrow it, then,” Phil says as he takes off his jeans.

Dan is stiff in his movements when he gets in bed. Phil folds his jeans and puts them on the desk chair. He is still wearing his socks. One is blue, patterned with pink clouds. The other is yellow, patterned with pizza slices.

He lies down next to Dan without touching him. Dan’s heart pounds with sudden nerves, but he opens the duvet up as invitation and rolls onto his side. Phil goes easily, his back molding to Dan’s chest like they were meant to be like this. The citrus and honey is subdued by a distinct Jimmy scent.

Dan was in love with Jimmy.

Dan wants to cry over Jimmy.

So he does. He shouldn’t. Not now.

“Dan?” Phil whispers. “Are you..?”

Phil turns around and Dan buries his face in Phil’s, Jimmy’s, hoodie. Phil holds him silently.

Dan feels like an idiot. He had Jimmy and he didn’t even realise what any of it was. It might not have been the right time, but Dan should have realised. He should have let himself feel. It would have made it so much easier.

What he feels for Phil is not something he can choose not to feel. But with those feelings, comes every other emotion he has suppressed. Dan can’t tell if he is in the cave or in the garden or in the Shadow Realm or in the darkness. This feels like something else entirely.

An idle thought suggests that he is matching his shadow, finally.

That never made sense to him before. He isn’t sure if it is making sense now either.

“Dan,” Phil says.

Dan isn’t crying anymore. He breathes long breaths against Phil’s chest.

“Did you know that I used to think that I could talk to my own shadow?”

It isn’t at all what Dan expected to hear. Everyone else usually asks what he is feeling, or thinking, when he gets like this. Dan breathes.

“I would look at it on my way to school and tell it about things,” Phil says. “I thought that everyone else did it, too. Like. I really thought that my shadow was listening.”

Dan smiles.

Phil’s thumb reaches Dan’s cheek and wipes some of the wetness away. Dan pulls back and looks up. Phil smiles back.

“Maybe it was,” Dan suggests.

Something close to pain covers Phil’s features for a second, before they smooth out. Dan thinks he knows what it means. They find each other in places they have never even dared to show to anyone else. It feels unexpected and scary and absolutely wonderful.

Dan thinks that Phil would follow him anywhere he went. Into the garden, into the cave. Strange to think that he felt part of this connection the very first time that they met. Superficial as it was at the time, Dan wants to believe that part of him knew that Phil is different.

Emotions aren’t as difficult in his arms. Dan swallows a wave of them once he thinks that thought.

“I think I didn’t realise that I liked Jimmy, too,” Dan says. “I think I just realised it today.”

It is scary to say.

“Now it’s too late,” Dan says.

Phil looks at his lips.

“I keep fucking things up for myself,” Dan says

Phil’s thumb moves down to the corner of Dan’s mouth. Dan shudders.

“Phil,” he breathes.

Dan feels like he can’t move, the air around them is so thick.

He wants to kiss Phil so badly.

“I want to kiss you so bad,” Phil whispers.

Dan licks his lips.

He can’t do this. He can’t give himself this. Not when he just cried over Jimmy. It isn’t fair to Phil.

“But…,” Dan says.

“Do you want to?” Phil asks.

“Yes,” Dan says. “I shouldn’t.”

Phil brushes his thumb over Dan’s bottom lip.

“Why not?” Phil asks.

Dan wants this so badly it hurts. He kisses Phil’s thumb. A chaste peck. He can see it on Phil’s face, the impact that it has.

Phil leans in. His nose brushes against Dan’s.

-

When the amethyst and the emerald fused, Dan’s character wasn’t exactly involved.

Dan had returned to the garden after collecting crystals. It was night time. The sky was littered with stars. A low hum of a faint breeze sweeping past made for background noise. Once he entered the part of the garden that contains Dye’s cabin, the game switched to a cut scene.

Dye and White were standing under a light by the side of the cabin. Dan’s character hid, watching them from a bush.

They were holding a crystal each. White, the purple. Dye, the green.

The crystals were proving to be more and more useful, but White kept putting off trying to pass to the Shadow Realm. He said that it wasn’t time. He said that they still had things to figure out. Dan had felt frustrated, waiting for the game to progress while doing the same thing over and over. Despite how much had been revealed to him at this point, he still felt like something was being kept out of reach. Some puzzle piece to find, in the right place at the right time.

The amethyst and the emerald aren’t exactly rare, but White had insisted they couldn’t be fused. Dan had accepted this without question. He had no reason to question it.

In the garden at night, Dye and White held the glowing crystals with intention. Music began to play, soft and sweet, like a lullaby. Dan had been glued to the screen, watching it unfold. Part of him hoped that it would be confirmed in this moment.

Dye and White looked into each other’s eyes. The wind moved through their hair. Even as sprites, the tension was palpable. Without a word, they exchanged crystals. White, the green. Dye, the purple. A noise started, something that sounded like everything at once. It was low but it grew, a long bass sound that seemed almost like a threat. Dye and White opened their palms. Holding them up in front of each other, the emerald and the amethyst levitated between them. The droning bass sound turned into a rhythm, a quick staccato, as the light grew and grew until finally, the screen went white.

A shaky text was typed out on the screen.

_The Emerald,_

_To Grant Them Calm._

_The Amethyst,_

_To Protect From Harm._

_For Whisperers Do Insist,_

_To Cross Over Realms,_

_This Fusion Shall Fall._

The white turned into green and purple, side by side, growing deeper until they faded. It was quiet. The breeze and the eerie noises of the forest were toned down. Across the screen, little sparkles of green and purple floated around like moving stars.

Dye and White were standing in an embrace. Dan’s heart was in his throat. As they parted, they held up the fused crystal, shining brighter than any others. All Dan could think about was connection, and love. That was what he saw between them as they seemed to catch their breaths, the fused crystals held in their joined hands. Part of Dan felt like he wasn’t actually needed. This story wasn’t about him, after all. It was about the two of them. It was about the fact that in order to move on, they had to meld. They got nowhere, walking in separate directions. They needed unity, and acceptance, and forgiveness.

Soon after this, Dye, White and Dan passed to the Shadow Realm. Meeting their own shadows that weren’t shadows but different versions of themselves in another world. Dan didn’t match his shadow. That became his final quest.

Some players already matched their shadow when they got to the other realm. It depended on how you played the game, and Dan hadn’t played the game like that. He had bounced around, doing small quests, but focusing mainly on Dye. He hadn’t entertained White and his story enough.

The Shadow Realm was not a hell version of their own world, like the game made the players believe. It was simply a different version. A separate path to take. Something that was inevitable, something unpredictable, that one must accept the existence of in order to move on.

Dan had been resisting his life. He resisted this new version of it, the one where he was made to be a caretaker for his alcoholic mum and a punching bag for his abusive dad, didn’t seem real. Time and time again, Dan had ended up feeling hopeless and alone and panicked, realising that he couldn’t decide where his life would go. There were circumstances in his life that prevented him from choosing his own path and living his own life. It didn’t matter that things got better. Dan became stuck in the frustration, pushed down by trauma and looking for comfort in the wrong places, because those places resembled what he was used to. 

He had to accept it. Like the Shadow Realm, Dan’s life felt like an alternate version, a hell version, of what he wanted his life to be. In reality, it wasn’t. It was just a different version than what Dan had expected it to be. In order to really move on, he had to stop himself from categorising moments of his life as “good” or “bad”. Because when he did, he got stuck in the “bad”. How would he be able to move on, knowing how much “bad” could lurk around the corners, and stop him from going in the direction that he wanted to?

Life isn’t good or bad. It simply is. Realising this wasn’t enough to change things, but it was a start. It made Dan want to start seeing a therapist, and move to London. It made him put up fulfilling his promise to the darkness. In the end, it enabled him to break that promise.

When Dan’s life changed, and he lost control over its progression, some kind of Shadow Realm was created, subconsciously. Because in order to cope, he had to look at the changes as a detour. Something different. Something that wasn’t supposed to have happened, but did. Another version of himself formed, and it wasn’t himself. It was an even more chaotic, and even more damaged version that haunts him still. Part of Dan is still kicking and screaming.

Dan doesn’t have to stop thinking of these parts of his life and himself as something separate. But to completely disregard them, to reject and detach from them, isn’t the answer. He can’t move on when he surrounds himself with distractors. He can’t move on when he reduces his existence to the aftermath of these events, something to withstand until he dies. Life is still going. There are more paths to take, and they aren’t all deceiving. Some of them are right. Some of them have mercy. There are people that will understand, if Dan lets them. And then there are people that will understand, regardless of how much Dan decides to show them.

Dan knows one person like that. He _is_ ready to let them in. He has been all along. That part of him, the frightened child, won’t believe the brightness of even the strongest crystal. And at the same time, it is the frightened child within that wants to believe it the most.

That isn’t the only part of him, though. Dan is many things. And there are parts of Dan that are capable of making a decision, regardless of how frightened he is.

It is time to make the decision, now.

-

Phil’s lips move against Dan’s. The scent of Jimmy fades. The citrus and honey takes over, overwhelming Dan’s senses, as he clutches the front of Phil’s hoodie and deepens the kiss. He can’t detach from this. He is in the moment and he is feeling. Every suppressed and ignored terrifying emotion blossoms inside of him and once they do, what lies beneath the surface isn’t scary like it appeared to be. In fact, these emotions aren’t scary at all.

They are wonderful. They are hopeful. They are understanding and empathy. Phil matches Dan’s pace. They walk side by side, together, and it seems almost like they had no choice but to end up here. In the bed in Dan’s small London flat, where Dan drowned in darkness and became achromatic, brightness emerges. Colours attach to him.

The growing desperation in Phil’s previously soft kisses tells Dan that it isn’t just him. Phil is so many things. Colours and monochrome and nerves and confidence. The contrasts swirl around and perhaps that can be too much for Phil to bear. While Dan is enamoured with every part of him and how these parts connect, Phil might see things differently.

Phil pulls away for a moment and Dan’s eyes open. As they catch their breaths, giddy smiles and breathy laughs bounce between them. It feels so easy.

The caress of Phil’s knuckles brush over Dan’s cheek. The hand stops, smooths out, and cups Dan’s jaw. Dan holds onto Phil’s waist. 

Despite the darkness of the night, Phil’s eyes become distinguishable. 

In the middle of the monochrome, colours appear. 

For the first time since he was a tiny child, Dan actually feels safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Melodia Africana III by Ludovico Einaudi  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	38. Chapter 38

Dan’s flat is basking in sunlight when he awakes.

His limbs are all tangled around Phil. Phil looks so content, despite the fact that his arm is being crushed by Dan’s ribcage. Dan’s leg is hitched up over Phil’s hip, knee against his stomach, calf tucked between his thighs. He is brushing up against something else, too. Something that is undoubtedly hard. Dan’s face flushes when curiosity gets the better of him and he moves his leg up and down, just slightly. He gets a soft hump in return, as Phil takes a deep breath in his sleep, smacks his lips and tucks his face into the crook of Dan’s neck.

Last night didn’t progress to anything other than kisses and whispers. It was late, they were tired, and Dan was overwhelmed by the entire day. He was still not entirely sober when they got to his place last night, and he is sure that Phil had been riding a buzz as well.

Dan glances at the alarm clock on his bedside table. It is one in the afternoon.

One thing is for sure, Dan has never slept like this next to another person. Never before has he spent an entire night dreamless, without waking up a single time, tangled up with someone.

Dan shifts a bit. Phil shouldn’t have to wake up just because Dan has to pee and take his meds. Dan would love to just stay cuddled up with him like this, but he should have taken his meds at eight am and they are well past that now.

There is no way for Dan to untangle himself without waking Phil up. No matter how carefully he sits up and swings his legs back, Phil unconsciously reaches out for him. Dan watches his face as his brow furrows, mouth going tight. His shoulders begin to shiver. Dan takes hold of the side of his neck and rubs his thumb over his adam’s apple in a soothing motion. Phil immediately relaxes against the touch and his eyes flutter open.

Phil’s eyes don’t look as bright right now. They have shifted to something that looks a bit greyer, but the smile on his face negates any indication that he is anything less than thrilled to be where he is. Dan’s heart clenches inside his chest. It might be due to the fact that he is still feeling a bit tired, because he has no idea where else the sudden bravery comes from as he leans down and puts his lips to Phil’s.

Phil tilts his head up slightly. Dan cups his jaw, keeping him in place. He goes down, putting his weight on his elbow and hitching his leg back up over Phil’s hip, calf pushing down between his thighs. He is harder now than he was before. Dan’s heart beats so hard that it almost feels like too much.

They are only exchanging closed mouth pecks, but they feel like more than any kisses Dan has experienced before this. They aren’t moving. Dan is nervous to move his leg now that Phil is awake, because it asks a question, a question that seems like so much right now.

He ends up not having to think about whether to ask. As he shifts, Dan’s leg moves against Phil and Phil lets out the softest moan in response. It is such a precious sound that Dan feels almost woozy with the conflicting feeling of finding something adorable and finding something hot.

They don’t say a word. They just keep kissing, and moving together, and it all seems to happen so quickly and effortlessly as Dan’s heart spills over into the palms of Phil’s hands. Phil opens his mouth and Dan deepens the kiss with some kind of gratitude that makes Phil hump his leg with more purpose. Dan is hard, too, where his crotch is pushed against Phil’s hip. The more Phil shifts and humps, the more friction Dan is granted as he keeps still, holding on to some false sense of dignity by not giving in to his growing need to rub himself against Phil in desperation.

They lie like that, slowly grinding against each other and kissing, growing hotter and hotter. Dan is practically sweating, panting against Phil’s mouth.

“Dan,” Phil breathes. “I just..”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he reaches down between his own legs, hand sliding beneath the line of his underwear, and grabs himself. As Phil stops kissing back, his focus placed somewhere else, Dan pulls away and opens his eyes. Phil is _watching_ him, eyes hooded and spilling over with lust. Under other circumstances, with another person, Dan would have tried to escape from what this feels like. Right now, with Phil, he feels no inclination to do so. Instead he looks back, feeling the way Phil’s hand speeds up against his leg, and Dan gets to witness the moment it happens written all over Phil’s face.

Phil gasps, eyes squeezing shut involuntarily. His body jolts as the tension snaps.

Dan reaches down and puts his hand over Phil’s between his legs. His heart is pounding, feeling the wetness that covers it.

When Phil’s eyes open again, there is some vulnerability in them that is usually better hidden. It hurts, seeing it, knowing that Phil just laid himself bare for Dan and needs that affirmation.

Dan leans down and kisses him softly, sweetly. He takes a hold of Phil’s wrist and pulls his hand out of his pants. His finger thread between Phil’s and all that wetness. Phil sighs a moan, like an aftershock.

“Feel good?” Dan whispers.

Phil breathes a laugh, but when Dan looks into his eyes, the vulnerability is still there.

“Yeah,” Phil says. “You have no idea how long I’ve…”

He stops, shaking his head as he squeezes Dan’s hand. Dan bites his bottom lip.

“Not that that’s all I want,” Phil corrects himself. “I just-”

Dan nods. He guides their hands down between his legs. Phil shifts a bit, towards Dan, and lets Dan wrap his hand around his dick inside those soft shorts.

“I know,” Dan whispers. “I know.”

Phil starts to move his hand, immediately at a fast pace. Dan’s breath hitches.

“Slower,” he says. “Just a bit… slower.”

Phil complies, eyes glazed. Dan sighs as he thrusts against Phil’s strokes, finding a mutual rhythm.

“Just like that,” Dan moans. “Oh, God.”

He is way too loud in bed. He is way too assertive. A sudden fear arises inside, one that reacts to the thought that Phil might think he is using him.

His hips slow, heart pounding. His body is protesting but his head isn’t there. He won’t carry on doing what he is doing when something like that is on his mind.

“Are you okay?” Phil asks.

He stops stroking. Instead, he thumbs beneath the ridge of Dan’s cockhead. It’s delicious.

“Uh-huh,” Dan manages to say. “Are you? I want-- I don’t mean to tell you what to do- _oh_.”

He shudders as Phil flicks his thumb in this particular way that feels amazing. Their eyes lock. The vulnerability is gone from Phil’s eyes. He does it again, and Dan reacts in the exact same way.

“Faster,” Dan urges him. “You can go faster now.”

“Okay,” Phil says, but he doesn’t do it immediately. He stalls. “And you don’t have to worry. I kind of like it when you tell me what to do.”

Dan groans, bowing his head to rest his forehead on Phil’s shoulder. Phil speeds up the strokes. It doesn’t take many for Dan to come.

It gets all over Jimmy’s hoodie. Dan breathes hard, eyes closed, as Phil strokes him slowly. It feels like forever, when they stay like that. Like Phil just doesn’t want to let go. Dan lets out a horny breath at the thought, twisting his head to the side to look up at Phil. Phil let’s go, wipes his hand on the hoodie, and then everything changes. Phil’s eyes widen and he pushes his hands over his mouth, shoulders shaking, as he struggles to stop himself from laughing.

Dan is too heavy and satisfied post orgasm to realise what he is laughing at. He just watches him for a bit, smiling as Phil comes down from it.

“I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that wasn’t directed at me,” Dan says.

Phil looks horrified again, shakes his head, a few excess giggles leaving him easily. His head slumps back on the pillow. He closes his eyes and smiles.

“God, no,” he laughs. “Who do you take me for?”

Dan bites lip, eyeing Phil up and down shamelessly now that he isn’t staring back. He can’t quite believe that a guy like this just actually touched him like that. But at the same time, it seems obvious. Because regardless of how attractive Phil is, their connection leaves Dan with less doubt than he has felt with another person.

“I don’t know yet,” is Dan’s response.

He puts a finger on Phil’s chin, traces it down the line of his jaw. Phil’s eye open. They are still urgent. He thinks a lot, Dan reckons.

“All I know is that I want you,” Dan concludes.

Phil breathes in.

“What were you laughing at?” Dan asks.

As much as he wants to share these moments with Phil, they feel like so much. They’ve had so many of them, one after the other, in a short amount of time. Dan just needs to relax a bit, so it’s easier to change the subject.

“I just realised that we can’t return Jimmy’s jumper now,” Phil says.

Dan’s head slumps back on the pillow next to Phil’s and they detangle.

For a moment, Dan doesn’t react. He just lets the words sink in as he stares at the angled ceiling above them, Phil’s gaze steady on the side of his face.

Then, the absurdity of the situation fully sinks in and Dan bursts out laughing. It’s high pitched and loud and entirely too much, and Dan can’t stop. He sits up, one hand clutching his stomach and the other steadying himself on the mattress.

“Oh, God,” Dan says as he chips for air. “That’s horrible.”

“Absolutely atrocious,” Phil agrees.

Dan looks at him and Phil is laughing. He breathes, trying to stave off the laughter.

“God, you have a contagious laugh,” Phil comments.

“I sound like a fucking witch,” Dan says.

“A hot witch,” Phil counters.

Dan blushes, but he puffs his chest out, trying to look unbothered.

“I’m hot, am I?” he challenges.

As always, Phil doesn’t challenge him back. He just smiles, leans forward a bit, and tilts his head to the side.

“Mhm,” he says.

He is so fucking irresistable, Dan is honestly impressed with his own sense of self denial and how long it kept him from realising the true extent of his attraction to Phil.

He felt free to give into it when they first met at the clinic, because at that point, it didn’t have to mean anything. Phil was a character in his head, not an actual person that threatened him to feel things he hadn’t been ready to feel yet.

Dan is giving into it now. He is ready to feel it.

“Honestly, I think Jimmy borrowed this from me, anyway,” Phil says with a shrug, a thoughtful look in his eyes. “So I’ll consider this as me taking it back.”

Dan looks between Phil’s eyes and mouth. Smooth, pretty pink versus bright blue and yellow. It is such an insane coincidence, that something that belongs to Phil has been tucked away in Dan’s drawer for all that time.

Dan leans forwards quietly, closing the distance, and they kiss. It is open mouthed and horny and insanely hot. Dan can feel it like electricity sparks in the air surrounding them, as the tension increases and Phil moves, straddling Dan’s lap.

They don’t break the kiss. Dan pushes his hand down the back of Phil’s pants and squeezes. Phil pushes into it like he never felt such a sensation before.

“Dan,” Phil says between kisses.

“Mmh,” Dan hums, pushing his mouth onto Phil’s again.

“No, Dan,” Phil laughs. “Listen.”

Dan feels a bit lightheaded as he pulls back, delirious with want.

“You were meant to take your meds, right?” Phil asks. “That’s why you needed to sleep at home?”

“Yeah,” Dan says.

“Did you take your meds already?” Phil asks.

“No,” Dan says.

This is a strange conversation to have while Dan is groping Phil’s ass.

“Do you want to take them now?” Phil asks.

Dan feels something uncomfortable stir in his chest.

“Why?” he challenges.

Phil reels it back, sitting back and regarding Dan calmly.

“Because you’ll miss your dose if you don’t,” Phil says. “When I start touching you I won’t want to stop.”

Dan’s face goes red and he full-on giggles, shaking his head. Phil looks so nervous and so confident at the same time, laughing with Dan.

Dan pulls his hands out of Phil’s pants. Phil moves, sitting down next to him instead. With that movement, Dan makes out something hard poking against the material of his boxers. He licks his lips. His body feels like it’s burning with the need to touch and touch and touch.

“Alright,” Dan says, getting up.

He stalls, turns around, and kisses Phil one more time. Phil starts to pull away but Dan keeps him close, holding on to one shoulder.

“Dan,” Phil laughs.

“Right,” Dan sighs, pulling away. “I’m going, I’m going.”

Phil grins at him. Dan finally gets to pee and take his meds and wash his hands. In the mirror, he sees something different. Not the scared teenager trapped in an adult’s body. Not the guy whose mental illness has aged him quicker than he would have otherwise. For the first time in a long time, Dan can recognise the person in his reflection as himself, no doubt about it. His hair is a mess and his face blushes patches of red from kisses and stubble. His eyes look more awake than they have in a while. It isn’t like feeling good looking or bad looking - all Dan thinks when he looks in the mirror is that the person looking back isn’t a stranger to him.

And that makes some part of him feel like crying a little bit.

He reenters the living room to the sight of Phil having removed Jimmy’s hoodie, standing by the coffee brewer, looking confused. Dan can only take in Phil’s chest and stomach. The dark hairs and the pink nipples and the pout of his stomach and the freckles covering his skin. Even half naked, Phil displays a range of colours, contrasted to one another. Something about it makes Dan feel emotional. Phil looks at him, glasses askew, and breaks into a smile.

“Stop ogling and help me out here,” he says.

“What, you can’t work out how to make coffee?” Dan laughs.

He wraps his arms around Phil’s waist and rests his chin on his shoulder. Phil takes just a second too long before he responds, obviously affected by the touch.

“I always make instant at home,” he says.

“Gross,” Dan says and makes a gagging noise.

“Shut up,” Phil says, spinning out of Dan’s hold. “You do it then if you’re so smart.”

Dan squints at him playfully.

“I will,” he says. “Because I’m so smart. And you’re dumb.”

Phil squints back.

Dan measures the coffee grounds and waters and puts on the brewer.

“I’ll show you dumb,” Phil says when Dan walks out of the kitchenette.

He grabs Dan’s wrist and pushes him down onto the bed. Everything happens so quickly that Dan feels dizzy with just how quickly the blood rushes down to his dick when Phil grinds down against him and hold him down by the shoulders.

Dan grabs Phil’s hips and pushes up, meeting his movements, and they groan in relief.

“Fuck,” Dan gasps.

“Yeah,” Phil urges in an excited whisper, as he leans down and kisses Dan’s cheek. “I want to hear you.”

Dan’s breath hitches, a strange, indistinguishable feeling starting up in his chest. He is still so goddamn turned on but he also feels like crying, a little bit. He can’t even tell why. Maybe it’s something like Phil felt last night, when he talked about talking to his shadow. When they meet in places they never prepared to show anyone else, hearing words they didn’t know they needed to hear.

This time it goes slower and faster at the same time. They grind together in a steady rhythm. It feels less like lust and more like connection. 

They manage to come just in time for the coffee to be ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: This Year's Love by David Gray  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	39. Chapter 39

Dan is spread out on top of the bed.

He just changed the sheets. After a warm shower, he feels absolutely renewed. The window is open, letting out some of the sex-thick air. Dan focuses in on the sound of the shower. Him and Phil have spent all day touching. Dan feels drunk on it, still, but not satisfied. Not when Phil is only a few metres away. So close yet so far.

Dan can find appreciation for the breathing room Phil’s shower allows him, even if it is small. His muscles are already starting to feel sore. They haven’t ventured into anything particularly exerting just yet, but that doesn’t matter. Dan’s left arm and thigh muscles are feeling the effects of wanking and fingering and coming, over and over again. 

They managed to squeeze in a nap between all of that. For an hour, Phil was spooned against Dan’s chest. Dan hasn’t really thought about it before, but Phil is noticeably smaller than him. He is bigger than Jimmy, almost as tall as Dan, but his body is narrower. His limbs are thinner. His body is delicate in a way that Dan’s isn’t. As corny as it sounds, Dan thinks that they fit perfectly together. He wants Phil back in his arms.

Phil is still washing up, though. So Dan scrolls his twitter feed and reads tweet after tweet discussing the bullshit of the day. He feels lucky that he isn’t part of it right now. As much as Dan wants to be a part of this community, he is glad that it isn’t the only thing he has. Especially not on days like this one, where apparently the recent update and announcement aren’t enough to stave off drama. 

Dan follows a lot of people from the forum, even if he is picky about who he allows on his feed. He has to be careful about it because he wants his existence in this fandom to feel happy and carefree. Despite this, some of them still talk about things going on on the forum that annoy them. There has been a few loud anti Dye/White fans today, and that has made for some discussion.

Sam and Mason haven’t said anything about it from what Dan can see, but regardless of this he finds their usernames mentioned over and over again. Of course, people have a problem with the fanfiction and fan art. Even fellow shippers are taking a stance against it, claiming that including sexual themes in their stories or drawings of the characters somehow cheapens Seagull’s story. Dan catches himself rolling his eyes and sighing. There are some people that he knows for sure have read and appreciated the sexual fics that are suddenly seeming very, very against it.

_Some fans really don’t know when to stop. Fanfiction is fine, but Dye and White aren’t supposed to be objectified. It puts queer stories in a bad light. Stop sexualising everything and maybe straight people will stop sexualising us, too._

It has been retweeted from one of Dan’s casual friends. Dan feels an urge to respond, and tell them that it’s not as if straight people writing about straight characters have to put that much consideration into their stories. If anything, it cheapens Seagull’s story to only think of it as ‘queer’, even if that part of it is important. Dan can’t fully rationalise his arguments and he doesn’t feel like doing so, either, but he finds it hard to stop when his brain starts. So he sends the group chat the tweet and explains some of his reasoning.

Mason responds. Dan frowns. Mason doesn’t usually respond that quickly.

**onebitwonder** : People have been coming for us all day.

**achromatic_bot** : really? why??

**onebitwonder** : apparently fanfiction stops being allowed when a gay couple is confirmed canon.

**achromatic_bot** : that’s bullshit

**onebitwonder** : It’s all fine, sexualising a relationship when we couldn’t be sure if it was real or not. Now that we know it is, that somehow means that we have a responsibility to do Completely Correct LGBT Representation. As if we’re trying to sell FW with our fics.

**ripewhisperer** : This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to leave.

Jamie has been saying that for a while. Less so after the announcement, but still. She takes on the weight of the fandom and the discussions. If Dan did that, he would probably want to leave, too.

**achromatic_bot** :probably best not to engage with it. it’ll blow over.

**ripewhisperer** : Or we can take a stance and stand up for our friends?

Dan feels a flare of anxiety in his chest.

**ripewhisperer** : I guess you have a reputation to uphold, though.

**achromatic_bot** : wym?

**ripewhisperer** : You have an in? Lol. Besides, people are mentioning you among the “good Dye/White shippers” while they tear down the rest of us. Better not risk that, right?

An “in”. As if Dan has had any contact with any of the creators since the stream and announcement was over. As if that would matter, regardless. Dan may care about his reputation, but he doesn’t do it out of consideration for how he appears to other people. He removes himself from the aggressive discussions because he knows it will pass and that, looking back, it won’t have been worth it. Besides, that isn’t what he wants to contribute to the fandom. He wants the fandom to be a happy place for him. He has been quietly adamant about creating that space for himself, because the rest of his life is filled with so much struggle. He won’t create problems where there are none just to prove someone wrong.

**ripewhisperer** : Sorry. I’m not angry at you. I’m just tired of this.

Dan sighs. He is just about to respond when the bathroom door opens.

Phil is only wearing a clean pair of tight, black boxer briefs that he borrowed from Dan. A flurry of mixed emotions stir in Dan’s chest as he puts his phone away and smiles at Phil, who is approaching the bed. His hair is wet and his skin looks soft, gorgeous. Dan wants to kiss all of it. He wants to forget about the other stuff. For once, Dan wants to live his real life in order to forget his online life.

On second thought, Phil doesn’t really feel like real life. Phil feels like an irregularity, an exception, and when Dan really thinks about it, he is suffocated by the idea of this thing between them ending. He is terrified of all of the colours he finally opened himself up to deceiving him, turning dark, or disappearing from him.

The mattress shifts when Phil sits down on the edge of the bed. He looks into Dan’s eyes. He doesn’t meet his smile.

He glances at the phone beside Dan on the bed.

“What’s wrong?” Phil asks when he looks back at Dan’s face.

Dan’s eyes well up with tears. He covers his face with his hands and bends his knees, pushing his thighs against his chest as he attempts to breathe deep breaths in order to stop whatever is happening inside him. Phil doesn’t buy that fake smile. Dan feels a mix, one part relief and one part annoyance. The latter wishes Phil would pretend for his sake.

Phil stays quiet when Dan doesn’t respond, but he moves. With a couple movements he ends up beside Dan and he waits. A breeze of Dan’s own body wash and shampoo fills Dan’s lungs. He feels a tremor in his hands. Phil doesn’t smell like Phil.

He puts a hand on Dan’s bare shoulder. Dan blinks. A tear rolls down his cheek by effect. It feels like a knife inside his stomach, the guilt and the shame in Phil seeing him like this. It is the very first day, still, of them actually acting on their feelings, and Dan is fucking crying. Because that is what he is. An emotional weight that grabs on to his loved ones’ ankles and drags them down with him. No matter how many beautiful colours and contrasts Phil is bringing into his life, Mum’s and Dad’s are still there. Dan is powerless against them. He takes and he takes and he can’t even stand up for his friends out of fear that it could make his own fandom experience a little bit worse. As if Dan somehow deserves to have something perfect in his life.

He spirals before he can stop himself. That thought leads to the next, which asks him how he can possibly claim to care for Haley or Lucy when all he does is avoid them. It hurts to think about, but Dan’s brain wants him to hurt more. Yesterday, he was overwhelmed by his feelings for Jimmy, and today he is in bed with Jimmy’s best friend. A small voice inside tells him that it isn’t like that, with him and Phil. Phil isn’t a backup or a revenge plan or a rebound. He is just Phil. He is somehow drawn to Dan like Dan is drawn to him and they have finally stopped resisting.

But then, how can Dan trust himself to be right about that? He might as well be deluding himself with everything he feels about Phil. He managed to fool himself into believing he had no feelings for Jimmy, after all. He could just as well be doing the same thing now, but the opposite way around. Dan has no way of telling, because he doesn’t feel his true feelings until later, when it’s too late, and the damage is already done.

Dan has this round about way of messing up every single one of his relationships and part of him doesn’t want to take responsibility for it, while the other asks whether he does this, subconsciously, to somehow justify his actions. Regardless, it is his actions that count in the end, not the reasons or the thoughts behind them. And based on Dan’s actions so far, he isn’t a very good person. Phil shouldn’t have to deal with that.

“Your shower kind of sucks,” is the first thing Phil says after a long stretch of silence.

Dan releases a wet breath. His brain isn’t really registering Phil’s words. He is too focused on trying to hold himself together, and to contain that dark spiral in a separate box in his mind, put aside to deal with later. It used to be so easy to do that. Right now, it’s near impossible.

“You should change the shower head,” Phil says. “It feels like needles on your back or something.”

Dan rubs his eyes dry and shakes his head.

“What the fuck are you on about?” he asks.

Phil takes Dan’s hand. Dan looks down at them, joined on top of Dan’s knee. He steels himself, begging his body to not begin to shake. He is still wading through the darkness of the cave. Yesterday it seemed so simple, to think of crystals guiding him through to the other side. Right now, he has a crystal right next to him, the brightest one, and it isn’t enough. Dan’s darkness is too dark. He was an idiot for hoping that things could get easier.

“Something different,” Phil says.

Dan has no response to that. His glass heart rattles inside his chest.

“Something different,” Dan repeats, incredulous.

It comes out pathetic; weak and sad and self pitying. Another tear rolls down Dan’s cheek.

Phil moves their hands from on top of Dan’s knee, down between the two of them.

“A few years ago, I had a mental breakdown,” Phil says.

The darkness flutters away, a little bit, when Dan turns his head to see bright blue, and white, and black. Phil’s voice sounds like he might as well be reiterating the times table. There is tension in his lips, though. A small sign that this isn’t something dull, or meaningless.

“It made me vulnerable,” Phil elaborates. “It made people worry about me. I couldn’t look at a close friend without being asked how I was feeling and why.”

Dan nods. He knows what that feels like. It makes him see himself as ungrateful and wrong, but coming from Phil, it sounds completely normal. Justified, somehow.

“All I wanted was for someone to talk about something different,” Phil says. “Especially when I was having a difficult moment.”

Phil’s breath shakes as he breathes in.

“So,” Phil shrugs, “I guess that’s what I’m trying to offer. Something different.”

It seems so simple. Like the easiest thing in the world. But no one else gets that. Not Haley, not Morgan, who are the two people that know at least some extent of Dan’s issues. While talking to them helps, it doesn’t feel like this. It doesn’t feel like…

Complete and utter understanding. Which is insane.

Phil doesn’t know the first thing about Dan and yet he has figured out something that Dan didn’t even know, himself.

As Dan thinks back, Phil has rarely ever asked him how he is doing, but not in the way that makes Dan feel uncared for. Quite the opposite, actually. Phil just treats him like a person. He doesn’t treat Dan like he is a problem in need of solving.

“I don’t deserve this,” Dan finds himself saying.

He is ungrateful. It is better if Phil knows this sooner rather than later.

“No,” Phil says. “You don’t get to do that.”

Dan stares at him, dumbfounded. Phil’s face has shed some of its softness now, turned into a quiet anger. Dan can deal with anger. He is used to it.

Still, their hands are clasped between them and Phil doesn’t seem to want to change that.

“That doesn’t work on me,” Phil says.

Dan glares daggers into Phil’s pretty eyes. His stomach twists. Phil’s eyes don’t soften. He doesn’t succumb to the volume of Dan’s turmoil. He stares right into that turmoil without as much as a flinch.

“ _What_ doesn’t work on you?” Dan spits out.

His heart is pounding. Small pieces of his poorly glued together heart is scattering about his insides from the movement.

“You’re really good at convincing people that you’re a bad person, aren’t you?” Phil asks.

There is pain in his voice. Dan’s mind goes blank.

“I’m not going to let you make me believe that you’re anything but good,” Phil says, some misguided conviction emphasising every word. “Because you are good, and kind, and special. You see past people’s disguises. You see through mine. I can tell it isn’t just me that feels it, though. Chris feels it. PJ feels it.” 

He pauses.

“Jimmy feels it.”

Dan takes a wet breath. Phil keeps his eyes steady on him.

“You make people feel seen, Dan,” he says. “I don’t know who made you believe that you’re a bad person, but whoever it is, was wrong.”

Dan brushes past an almost incomprehensible mix of memories that look like moments, etched into Dan’s brain like photographs of who he really is in the eyes of others. It is his father’s exasperated sigh and raised voice. It is Dad’s big reaction to small mistakes that weren’t based on Dan’s actions but on Dad’s mood. It is Mum’s clouded eyes, only offering comfort when she is intoxicated. It is her silence next to Dad all through Dan’s growing up, when he was shouted at because Dad had a bad day at work. It is their shared way of pulling him in when things are bad and pushing him out when things are good.

This part of his brain offers such a depth that Dan drowns in it. He wants to run. He wants to cry these tears on his own and enter the darkness he is used to.

“It isn’t about being a bad person, or anything,” Dan says, voice flat. “I just know who I am.”

There is silence, for a moment. Phil strokes the back of Dan’s hand with his thumb. He shifts closer, full of warmth and emotion that Dan desperately wants to be able to accept. He isn’t sure if he is capable of doing that.

Phil hasn’t taken on Dan’s quiet challenges before, but now that he is, Dan doesn’t seem to be able to make Phil understand that he is making a mistake. He is twisting and turning everything inside of Dan and while Dan would love to hold on to Phil’s thinking he is good, he knows he won’t. Phil is fighting a lost cause, Dan thinks.

When Dan looks into Phil’s eyes now they have gone soft. They are wet. They are so full of conviction, Dan’s stomach sinks knowing he can’t live up to it.

“Do you?” Phil whispers.

“Phil,” Dan says, struggling through being subjected to Phil’s affection for him.

“You’re not a bad person, Dan,” Phil says. “I promise you.”

Phil only has to glance at Dan’s lips for Dan to lean in and kiss him.

It is too much. Phil likes him too much. Dan has to resist. He can already feel some of what it will feel like when Phil realises that Dan is right; that he isn’t good and he can’t be good. Not to himself, not to anyone else.

Dan pulls away from the kiss and puts his hands up. He places them on Phil’s chest, and -

Fails.

He fails to actually look into those seeing eyes and push them away. He fails to turn that earnestness dark, to make it into something Dan feels familiar with, that he knows how to handle.

Dan fails to detach. He is as present now as he was before, and when Phil gently takes Dan’s wrists and slides them off, down, to intertwine their hands - Dan lets him. Dan blinks the tears away, but he can hardly do that either.

“It’s okay,” Phil says. “You don’t have to be scared.”

That is the thing. Dan feels _seen_ , and it terrifies him for a moment before it turns into something different. Something tangible, and safe. An open embrace that Dan can choose to walk into, and in doing so, quit denying himself of things that feel good only because they’re scary.

Dan kisses him again and Phil runs his fingers through Dan’s hair. He holds him in place by the back of his head, firm and gentle at the same time. 

Phil is so many things. The contrasts are stark and they complement each other. They create beauty in every sense of the word.

The amethyst and the emerald glow purple and green in Dan’s mind. If only he takes hold of them and lets them guide his way. If only he accepts this new warmth in his chest for longer than a brief moment. Maybe then, Dan can finally make it to the other side of the cave, where self insight doesn’t only mean staring yourself blind at your own flaws.

Dan never considered that there could be good to find inside himself, too.

Dan tried and tried to drag his parents through the cave with him. He knew he couldn’t go through it alone, then. He needed them to change for himself to change. They never followed him there. They had their own caves to walk through and eventually, Mum made it there. She hadn’t needed Dan to push her through it. She couldn’t help Dan make it through his own.

Dan was convinced he was alone in his own cave. He isn’t. He doesn’t have to be. He doesn’t have to be guided by the crystals as they brighten up the path. The help doesn’t have to come from a distance. It can come close, take Dan’s glass heart in its hand and smooth the edges.

Maybe Phil shares this cave with him. Maybe he has passed through it before.

Dan takes Phil’s hand and allows him to lead their way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: I'll Be Your Mirror by The Velvet Underground  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	40. Chapter 40

Phil leaves on Monday morning.

Dan nearly cries, trading sleep-soft kisses with him in the doorway as he stalls. The air feels cool and Dan is only wearing a t-shirt and boxer shorts. Phil is in a hurry, or so he said. There seems to be not even a glimmer of rush in the way he bunches up the fabric of Dan’s t-shirt at the sides and keeps his lips against Dan’s.

Phil has his coat on, but underneath he is wearing a black t-shirt that belongs to Dan. Underneath his jeans he is wearing Dan’s underwear. It makes Dan feel safe. Despite what happens, Phil will have to return those clothes at some point. Dan will get to see him again.

It isn’t that he is unsure of Phil. Phil has been consistent in his advances from the very start. Though he never asked for anything, in hindsight Dan realises that there was something there the whole time. The way Phil would steal little moments alone with him when they were in a group, and insisted on seeing him alone again after that first, accidental coffee. He was ready to take anything Dan was willing to give him.

Rather, Dan is unsure of himself. He is scared of what thoughts may arrive once Phil leaves. He is scared of this feeling going away. The one that Phil instilled in him. This feeling of security, and understanding, and most importantly, being deserving of feeling that. They are too new to have taken hold yet. For now, they exist in Phil’s presence.

The spectator is unpredictable, but Dan has no doubt that it will speak to him as soon as Phil closes the door behind himself.

“Okay, okay,” Phil breathes and turns his head to the side.

He keeps his hold of Dan’s sides.

“Okay,” Dan says, tugging on Phil’s sleeve.

They stand unmoving, looking into each other’s eyes until they crack up simultaneously, blushing and shaking their heads at themselves.

“I’ll come back after,” Phil promises. “If you want.”

“I want,” Dan says immediately.

Phil exhales through his nose as some kind of self control finally settles into him. He releases Dan from his hold and takes a big step backwards, out of the flat.

Dan stays in the doorway, watching with amusement.

“Now you close the door,” Phil says.

“No, now you go press the lift button,” Dan says.

Phil groans. He takes a few steps towards the lift, presses the button, and immediately looks back at Dan as if he could have suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth during the few seconds that Phil turned his back to him.

“Okay, close it,” Phil says.

“Why?” Dan whines.

“Because it is entirely too tempting to stay when you’re looking at me like that.”

Dan blushes.

“Shut up,” he says.

“You shut up,” Phil says and sticks his tongue out.

The lift comes to a stop. Phil’s eyes are urgent as they flick from the lift door, back to Dan’s door, a couple times.

He runs towards Dan and in his frenzy, grabs the front of Dan’s shirt. There is a beat then, when everything slows down and the only thing that exists in Dan’s vision is Phil’s bottom lip, before Dan leans down and they kiss.

Dan has no time to process it, because Phil pulls away almost immediately, turns on his heel, and bounds towards the lift. Dan watches him go inside. The lift descends, taking Phil with it.

Dan is smiling to himself when he closes the front door. There is some residue of Phil left inside his chest for the time being. It warms him all the way from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head as he falls backwards into bed with a sigh, a rush of giddy feelings fluttering around inside of him. The only thing Dan can really take from the feeling is one thought. It is simple and unoriginal but to Dan it is entirely new.

Dan likes Phil, and Phil likes him back.

Dan’s phone buzzes on the nightstand and he reaches for it. It is a text message from Phil.

**Phil** : >3

With a confused smile, Dan responds.

**Dan** : tf kinda backwards heart is that

**Phil** : It’s not a heart. It’s >3.

**Dan** : so, what? >3? more than three?

Dan gets it just as Phil responds.

**Phil** : Yeah. We need to do more than three experiments to solidify the hypothesis.

Dan laughs to himself. Phil is such a massive dork.

**Dan** : any conclusions so far?

**Phil** : I think so

**Dan** : share w the class?

**Phil** : I think I like you.

Dan’s heart starts beating, hard.

**Dan** : wasn’t it supposed to be about what kind of coffee i like?

**Phil** : Well, sometimes experiments change direction, right? You think you’ll find out one thing, and that there’s a set path, but once you start to explore it you find a different conclusion entirely. Like, the whole thing was really about something else all along.

**Dan** : is this your roundabout way of telling me you wanted this more than you wanted me to admit that coffee drinks taste better than regular coffee?

**Phil** : Well, no. I’ve only bought you coffee twice so far.

**Dan** : right. >3.

**Phil** : >3

-

Dan showers, has coffee, and turns on his PC. As long as he keeps doing things, it seems like he can escape the thoughts that usually cause him to spiral. He doesn’t read the latest chapter of Sam’s fic, though. It seems strange to read about that kind of thing when he is in the middle of experiencing something to that effect.

The ghost of a feeling hits him right in the stomach. Dan takes a deep breath and wills it away, away, away. He can feel it somewhere, like a distant voice calling for him. He knows what the thought is but he makes sure to not actively think it. 

Susanne would have something to say about that. She has told Dan time and time again that it is better to let the thoughts and feelings come, to accept them. Susanne says that repression only builds them up to something that they aren’t. That they become these looming threats of danger, when in reality, they are just thoughts. They are just feelings. Dan wishes he could practice what Susanne preaches, but at the same time, that seems like an unrealistic goal.

Dan decides to look at his twitter timeline instead. It hasn’t calmed down since yesterday. There are tweets upon tweets still stressing that shippers have to be mindful now. The more Dan reads on, the less it seems to be about that, though. Instead, what he finds is petty bickering and insults, vague mentions of Sam and Mason. Dan is more surprised that this topic is still going than anything else. People usually move on quicker than this. 

There are so many other things to discuss, anyway. Halloween is coming up, and with that, a holiday patch that usually includes some fun contest. Dan doesn’t participate in those, but he does enjoy the way the game looks for that time. Pumpkins growing in Dye’s garden, the candles lighting up the night to create an orange glow. Dan has grown so accustomed to the holiday related themes that they have become something he holds on to, something to remind him that time is still passing.

That is not what the group chat is talking about. They are still talking about annoying people judging the fanfiction they used to love. That feeling Dan wants to keep away from looms closer. He doesn’t want it. He wants to keep feeling good about the weekend, but the thing is, he does. He does still feel like everything has changed, and like he is excited, and that is the only thing keeping him from being overcome by shadows.

It is so embarrassingly stupid, to know that those thoughts aren’t true, and to still be deceived by them over and over again. Dan looks away from the computer for a moment. If he can’t properly distract himself online, he doesn’t know what to do.

As if on cue, Dan’s phone rings.

He immediately gets that feeling of Phil, and safe, and exciting. He never feels that when his phone rings otherwise. Dan gets his phone and as he looks at the caller ID, his stomach drops.

Regardless, he answers. His heart is in his throat, but he answers.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Dan, it’s Dad.”

“I know that. It says so on the screen when you call, you know?”

“Well, how about that.”

“Yeah, it’s a pretty amazing invention, isn’t it?”

“Astounding.”

Dan makes sure to keep his sigh inaudible. They can do that sarcastic back and forth. It is easy, like a flip of a switch. That is not why Dad is calling, though. That is never why he calls. Dan would be upset about it if he didn’t treat their phone calls like that, too.

“Anyway, why are you calling?” Dan asks.

It is better to get it over with, whatever it is, as quickly as possible. Dan has already ruled something Mum related out of the equation. Dad doesn’t joke around when something is going on with her.

“Can’t I just call to talk to my oldest son?” Dad asks.

“That you can,” Dan says back. 

He is unable to hold back the passive aggressive bite of the reply.

Fortunately for right now, Dad is blind to subtext.

“I was thinking that we should come visit soon.”

If Mum troubles are at the top of the list of things Dan doesn’t want to deal with, this one is a strong runner up.

“Okay,” Dan says, tensing up.

“Okay,” Dad says, mimicking his tone. “I’m the one paying for the flat, you know.”

Dan wants to scream.

“I didn’t even say anything bad,” Dan says. “You can come if you want to.”

“Why do you always act like this?” Dad asks. “Adrian talks to us. Why can’t you?”

If only Dad had some level of personal insight, Dan would be able to tell him. He would be able to tell Dad that this phone call alone is going to make him feel weird for some time. He will be caught up in that terrifying in-between of past and present, only because of the reminder that his Dad exists and can call him at any moment, bearing bad news.

He won’t tell him that, though. Dad would only take it as a needless insult; a petty childish thing to make Dan feel worse over.

“I don’t know,” Dan says, voice flat. “Sorry. I’ve been busy.”

For the first time since Saturday, Dan detaches.

“Busy with what?”

The half-laugh it ends on feels like nothing. The spectator acknowledges that it hurts but it is only smug about it. Luckily, Dan doesn’t have feelings right now.

“I went out with friends,” Dan says.

He doesn’t tell his dad things like that. For all Dad knows, Dan never does anything.

“What friends?”

“Lucy, Haley,” Dan shrugs.

“Right,” Dad says. “And you can afford that?”

There is something kicking and screaming inside of Dan, but it seems far away.

“I only paid for the tube fare and to get in the club,” Dan says. “We had drinks at Haley and Lucy’s so I didn’t get anything when we were there. So yes, I can afford it.”

“You drink?”

Dan’s stomach drops. There is a line that has been established right now, and if Dan falls over one end it will create everything out of nothing. 

Dad gets these ideas, sometimes. He suddenly becomes aware that Dan is a person. He doesn’t view Dan as much as a person like he does Adrian, though. No, Dan is someone Dad can control. That is what Dan thinks it is, anyway, when Dad suddenly becomes convinced that Dan needs his help. It is simply a backhanded way of making sure that Dan knows that he isn’t free to do what he wants to. 

Wrapped in something that sounds like concern, it doesn’t do to push against it.

“Rarely,” Dan says. “What about it?”

Dad sighs.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I guess I’m worried about it being hereditary. You already have some of her other mental illness stuff. I think you got that side of the coin. Adrian doesn’t have that.”

Dan looks over at his bed and thinks about how Phil was in his arms only a couple hours ago. In that moment, everything in his life felt different. The feelings approaching now were manageable. Because Phil doesn’t think that Dan is a bad person, a shell that is only packed with mental illness and all of the difficulties that comes with it. Phil doesn’t think of Dan as the bad version of his Mum and Dad’s collective DNA.

“I don’t drink like that, though,” Dan says.

“I guess I have no way of knowing that,” Dad says with an air of authority.

Coming from a non manipulative person that cares for people other than themselves, this conversation would have made Dan feel cared for. The thing is that Dad doesn’t actually care. Not like other people do. He finds Dan’s flaws and he pokes at them. He uses them as leverage for the next time Dan tries to stand up for himself.

“So when were you thinking about coming to visit?” Dan sighs.

“I can tell you’re thrilled,” Dad says with a laugh.

Dan decides to fake a laugh in return.

“It’s not that,” he insists. “I’m just…”

He can’t say tired. Then Dad will ask what the hell he is tired from, what with only going to work three days a week. And then that would lead to the assumption that Dan is still tired after the weekend, thus solidifying Dad’s growing belief that Dan has a drinking problem.

“... distracted,” Dan decides to say. “I’m waiting for a call from my boss.”

“Oh,” Dad says. “Then, don’t let me keep you.”

Dan feels a bitter smile stretch on his face as a tear rolls down his cheek.

“No worries,” he says in a chipper voice. “I’ll get back to you about visiting.”

“Sure,” Dad says. “We’ll talk later. Love you, bear.”

Why does he always have to say that?

“I love you, too,” Dan says.

When Dan hangs up, he is shaking. He shouldn’t be shaking. He knows what Dad is like and he is childish for still being affected by it like this.

Dan still keeps that deranged smile on his face as he feels his insides boil with frustration and anger. The crystals aren’t leading his way right now. They are flashing red and though Dan knows that it’s a false alarm, it doesn’t stop the feelings they provoke from coming. He is only a fragile thing, easily swayed from one mood to the next, unreliable in every sense of the word.

The thought that Dan was able to push away before comes now. 

It asks how long it will take for Phil to realise that he is wrong about Dan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song of the chapter: Weird Fishes/Arpeggi by Radiohead  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	41. Chapter 41

There is a swirling inside Dan’s head that takes him down the stairs and to Lucy and Haley’s front door. He knocks, with no response. He rings the doorbell. There is not a single sound coming from inside the flat. Dan takes a deep breath. A small, sad voice inside releases a petulant whine.

Reaching out is the good option. He only wants to be distracted for long enough to stop thinking about Dad’s version of him. The version that Dad insists on, the one that Dan so easily puts on. It doesn’t fit him anymore. It is too small. It constricts his chest. He can’t breathe properly, but once it’s on it is so difficult to take off. The collar gets stuck at Dan’s head, and he drowns in it.

Dad sees Dan as one thing. Sometimes, what that is changes, but any previous version is left forgotten.

The version of Dan that did well in school, and helped out with Mum, and listened to Dad vent every day doesn’t exist in Dad’s world anymore. No, now Dan is an underachieving, depressed disappointment that won’t ever be able to work a nine to five job like a normal person does. It isn’t fair. Not after how hard Dan has fought to get his life back. Not after everything he did for them; prioritising them and their well being rather than his own. 

Love is conditional. You have to work for it. Right now, Dan has nothing to offer to get it.

Dan walks down two more flights of stairs. He doesn’t visit Will and Rob often, but he feels desperate to rip Dad’s version off, and find a version of himself from someone else’s perspective. Someone that knows less about him.

_You’re really good at convincing people that you’re a bad person, aren’t you?_

Dan thinks that he is rather trying to convince people that he is good, and failing miserably. He finds his own existence as determined by the people around him. 

Phil was right about one thing. Dan reads people well. He notices the small details. He can’t be sure he is always correct, but he finds that a lot of the time, he is. Growing up with people that were unpredictable, Dan had to teach himself to notice patterns. Little tells, warning him before it begins. He just never thought that anyone else noticed.

Rob is wearing black sweatpants, a grey t-shirt, and his hair is a mess when he opens the door. Will must be gone. He always answers the door otherwise.

“Dan,” Rob says with a surprised raise of his eyebrows.

Dan already rehearsed what he was going to say to Haley or Lucy for when they would greet him. He finds those words disappearing as he looks at Rob’s face. One thing Dan has noticed about Rob is that he notices things, too.

Right now, Dan has no idea how to talk to a person that can tell when he isn’t feeling well. So his mouth stays shut. He feels like an idiot.

“Come in,” Rob says in response to Dan’s dead stare.

He steps aside and Dan walks in.

“Thanks,” Dan remembers to say.

Dan kicks off his shoes and rolls his shoulders back. He has no idea what the fuck he is doing.

Then Rob walks back into his vision and tilts his head.

“Alright?” he asks.

Dan’s heart starts beating harder. He hasn’t detached. He thought he did. Maybe it only lasted for the duration of the call. He hadn’t expected to feel his face scrunch as he fights tears in response to a common pleasantry.

“I’m fine,” Dan manages to grit through his teeth. “I’ll be fine. I just needed company. Sorry.”

It isn’t that he feels like Rob needs an apology. Dan has always perceived him like an open door, someone to talk to without being judged. He hasn’t tried before, he doesn’t have solid proof of the theory, but Dan notices things. Rob isn’t like Haley, Lucy, and Will.

“Okay,” Rob says. “No worries. D’you want to sit down?”

“Sure, thank you,” Dan says.

They enter the living room and Dan sits down on the sofa just below the window. Rob and Will have a solid place here. It feels like a grown up’s flat. House plants, table cloths, rugs, stylish art hanging on the walls. In some ways, Dan feels like he is much younger than them than he is.

Rob sits down next to Dan and crosses his legs. He leans on the arm rest.

“Is it family stuff?” Rob asks.

Dan glances at him. Rob is sitting exactly like Dan always tries his best not to.

“Yeah,” Dan says. “It’s nothing. Everything is fine.”

Rob says nothing.

“It just takes it out of me, talking to them,” Dan elaborates. “Still.”

Rob’s face is all empathy. For the moment, Dan feels able to stomach that. He is like a sponge, soaking up every drop of perception that doesn’t look like Dad’s.

“It’s the same for me,” Rob says. “Not that I ever really talk to them. But when I have to, it’s hard.”

“How long has it been?” Dan asks.

“A year, I reckon,” Rob says. “Yeah. Grandma’s funeral. Before that it had been three years.”

To someone else, Rob would look unaffected by this fact. Dan can tell, though. He can tell that Rob glances away for a moment. His fingers drum on top of the arm rest. The signs are small, but Dan knows them well after a lifetime of working on perfecting his own.

“Sorry,” Dan says.

“I’m happier without them,” Rob says. “But yeah, it sucks. Sometimes I wish I had that. Like Will does.”

“Yeah,” Dan says.

The silence sits between them. Rob uncrosses his legs and turns towards Dan.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

“Hm,” Dan says, as he feels his eyes start to tear up again. “It’s nothing exciting, really. Not anything original. Just the typical leftovers after years of trauma and holding on to the idea of being accepted by them, for some reason.”

Rob doesn’t react like other people. In some ways, he is like Phil. He sits calmly in the face of something that would make someone else react like they can’t imagine living with feelings like Dan’s. It is relieving, to say the least. It holds none of Haley’s resentment, either. It isn’t like talking to Susanne. He isn’t being analysed. 

“Well, Mum accepts me,” Dan says. He bites his bottom lip and looks down between his knees. “She’s… She’s good. She wasn’t always, though.”

Rob hums.

It takes Dan a moment, as he struggles to swallow the lump in his throat.

“I know I can make a relationship with her, now,” Dan says. “My brain doesn’t get that, though. It’s still stuck in everything she _did_ , as if it’s happening now. It isn’t fair to her. I should-”

Dan stops himself.

“You should what?” Rob prompts him.

Dan shakes his head at himself and lets out a wet chuckle.

“Try harder?” he asks, a bitter smile on his face.

“Sounds like you’re trying pretty fucking hard already, Dan.”

Dan shuts his mouth. No matter how much he notices, he could never predict being told that.

“You don’t have to be best friends with her now,” Rob says. “You can’t control how you feel. Give yourself a break.”

Dan sighs.

“I just always imagined that,” Dan’s breath shudders, “if we ever got to this point, I’d be able to bond with her.”

“You couldn’t have known how getting to this point would feel, though,” Rob says. “Trust me, I get it. You can’t predict that stuff.”

The faint drizzle of rain turns into hard, unrelenting noise. They both turn their heads to the window, watching the wind and the rain as they battle for dominance.

“My mum tried, too,” Rob says. “It isn’t like I planned on never talking to them again. I’m just tired of playing their game. I’m not some kid anymore. They can’t tell me how to think or feel or what to do. I get to decide that.”

He puffs his chest out. There’s a genuinity to him that Dan has never seen before. There is none of the subdued gentleness Dan has encountered when they’re with Will.

“And I’m not ready,” Rob concludes. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. I’m just trying to make peace with the past, still. That’s hard enough without watching them stick to their old patterns.”

Dan doesn’t know what to say to that. Part of him feels like he could adopt that attitude for himself, but in reality he can’t. He is still linked to them, given that Dad helps pay for the flat. What he went through wasn’t that bad in the grand scheme of things. It isn’t like Dad threw him to the side or like Mum hasn’t tried. He is lucky, in some ways. Dan is the one that puts a stop to the progress now, not them.

“Haven’t you made peace with it?” Dan asks. “You’re so well adjusted. Other people wouldn’t think you’ve gone through that.”

Dan thinks he can spot a small, proud smile trying to break out on Rob’s face.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever make peace with it,” Rob says. “That’s not what it’s about, really. I’ll always feel sad that I didn’t get the same thing a lot of other people do. It’s always going to be unfair that I didn’t get to be loved until I was twenty six. That’s always going to affect me.”

It stings, to hear it put that bluntly. Rob takes a breath.

“But I’m trying,” Rob says. “That’s all anyone could ever ask of me. I have to focus on the here and now. And the here and now is pretty fucking good, most of the time.”

They share a smile.

“Yeah,” Dan finds himself agreeing. “I guess it is.”

There is so much Dan still wants to change about his life, but there is one thing he doesn’t.

“Thank you,” Dan says. “I needed to hear that today.”

Rob crosses his legs again, going back to the same position as before. Dan finds himself mimicking it. He doesn’t care what it looks like, right now.

“Trust me, you’re further along than I was at twenty seven,” Rob says. “I wouldn’t have talked to anyone.”

“Yeah, this really isn’t my style,” Dan chuckles.

“I’m glad you came,” Rob says. “You can come by any time, you know that, right?”

Dan forces himself to nod.

“Yeah,” he says.

Rob gives him a long look, but they don’t stay on the topic. Instead, he turns on the TV and ends up showing Dan pictures of the flats him and Will have been looking at, as they are planning on moving to a bigger place. Dan feels his worries sink somewhere outside of his consciousness. They aren’t gone, but for now, he can stop himself from being suffocated by them. He listens to Rob talk and he gives his opinion, even if he feels mostly impressed by the kinds of places Rob and Will apparently are able to afford.

When Dan leaves, he feels lighter. Rob hugs him, and a small, neglected part of Dan wants to linger in his arms. There is something like nurture in it, care, something that Dan never really had but somehow recognises when he is subjected to it. Rob doesn’t seem to be in a rush to end it, anyway. Despite being shorter than Dan, Dan feels like he is the one that is being held, and that feels good.

Rob closes the door and Dan stops in his tracks. Looking up the stairs, he feels no desire to go back to his. His flat has been painted by Phil, his energy remains. There are so many new memories to hold on to. But they don’t overpower all of the turmoil Dan has been suffocated by for the past two years. Going back means opening his brain up to processing the conversation with Rob in a way that Dan doesn’t feel ready to do yet. He wants to keep feeling good about it.

Dan’s phone buzzes. It is a message from Phil.

**Phil** : Thinking of you.

The next message shows an emoji of a cloud with rain. The next is of lightning. The third and final emoji is a black heart. Dan looks out the window. The rain hasn’t calmed, and neither has the wind. The sky rumbles on occasion, a precursor to thunder and lightning.

It isn’t the kind of weather that makes you want to go outside. Regardless of this, Dan walks up the three flights of stairs, grabs his raincoat, and makes his way out of the apartment building.

There is another place that he has been told is open for him.

-

Rain doesn’t come often in Fall Whisperer, but there is one moment during the story based gameplay that has become a bit of a staple in the fandom that includes it.

It is set when they come home after they first made their way to the Shadow Realm. Dye, White and Dan walked out of the cave and to the railway. It felt strange to Dan, to see Dye in these environments for the first time. They weren’t suited for him. In his soft clothes, with that bright blue long hair, he stuck out as something a lot more colourful than he did in the garden. The garden’s fullness and variety of colour were, rather, in stark contrast to White.

The rain was pouring down. White suggested they take cover in the locomotive, all three of them, until the storm passed.

The interior looked different to the last time Dan had been in there. The scattered assortment of blankets and pillows had become arranged, set up. There was even a plant next to the door, inside a red pot. White’s equipment was up on the wall in the same way as before, neatly organized. It matched the rest of the small room better now.

To the backdrop of loud rain on the roof of the locomotive, Dye, White, and Dan sat on the bed. At first Dan thought that the scene seemed unnecessary. He was still thinking about what had happened in the Shadow Realm. What he thought were ghouls, evil versions of them in a dystopian world, had instead turned out to be so similar to their world that part of Dan felt cheated. So much of the story was changing, from Dye and White’s secret crystal exchange and fusion to the unexpectedly serene Shadow Realm, which Dye and White seemed to have expected.

Dan was meant to match his shadow. His shadow told him it had “worked so hard” on making that happen. 

Before anything else, three dialogue options appeared.

What was that?  
We should get to work.  
Let’s sleep.

Dan picked the first option. At this, White and Dye exchanged a look. 

“You knew, didn’t you?” White asked.

“Knew what?” Dan’s character said.

The soft melody in the background, paired with the rain, seemed like an inappropriate setting to have this conversation in.

“That it is not what it seemed,” Dye said.

There had been clues, scattered throughout the game. The very first one had come right at the start, when Dan had tried to enter the cave. The one question that had suggested that the shadows may not be evil. That they could be gentler, in need of help. White had talked about them like that, mostly. Despite this, the progression of events and the need to get the appropriate weapons and armour to be able to pass to the next realm suggested something else entirely. In most video games, that meant that there would be a big battle, a climax, followed by an ending.

Perhaps the reaction the player had to this half-resolution was a matter of experience. Dan remembers guiding Morgan through the game the first time she played, and how she easily picked up on all of these clues, leading her to feel less surprised at what the Shadow Realm really was than Dan had been. Morgan viewed it more as a story than as a game, while Dan had done the opposite.

Three more dialogue options appeared.

Why did you lie?  
We should get to work.  
Let’s sleep.

Dan picked the first option. He had no interest in progressing the game before these things were explained to him.

“You need an enemy,” Dye said. “To motivate you during these times. Something defeatable. Had you known, you would not have thought that there was a point to it.”

“Why were you scared, then?” Dan’s character asked.

Dye and White looked at each other again.

“I found out recently,” Dye explained. “Actually, I found out long before. I never believed it until I agreed to help White with the crystals.”

Dan had been confused. If there was no enemy to defeat, then, how would the game resolve itself? What _was_ the point?

“How did White know?” Dan’s character asked.

A rumble was heard from outside.

“I never treated them like enemies,” White said. “I already had an easier time communicating with my shadow across realms.”

“You are a whisperer,” Dye said. “You didn’t get to experience the shadows on your own in the same way that me and White did. You were forced to deal with them until you no longer could. They made you antagonise them from the very start. Of course you needed an enemy, Dan. You wanted an end to the suffering.”

Dan, in his childhood bedroom at his parent’s place, had let out a quiet breath as his eyes filled with tears. His dad had been visiting Adrian for the weekend, while Dan stayed at home waiting for the next disaster as Mum slept in the bedroom.

He didn’t just want an end to the suffering. He needed it. He couldn’t move on without it. The prospect of keeping this heaviness in his heart made life look daunting. It wasn’t comforting to Dan at the time, to know that there was nothing he could do other than to try to change his perspective on it. He didn’t know if he thought that that was a good message to send, either.

“Your ability is different to what they made you believe,” White filled in. “Rather than being able to see what terrible things exist in the world, you have gained the ability to see nuance.”

The heaviness of the rain started to ease.

“It isn’t all good. The shadows are scary, especially when you don’t know what they’re for or what they want. But just because they won’t go anywhere, that doesn’t mean that things can’t be good. Not because of them, but in spite of them. It isn’t what any of us wanted, but we can keep going. That’s what they want to do, too, after all.”

“It is hard to communicate with them,” Dye said. “But we can make it easier. You have to match your shadow.”

“You have to Fall,” White said.

The scene ended with the camera panning out through a window on the locomotive, up towards the sky, as the clouds began to clear out. The rain was still there, but it had turned into a small drizzle. The sun was going down. The sky was a mixture of pink and purple. The silhouettes of two birds made their way across the sky as the image faded to black.

Dan hadn’t known what it meant at the time. He read up on it after the game ended, and even though people explained it in ways that made sense, it didn’t resonate with him like other parts of the game did.

Dan’s sneakers are completely soaked through when he walks inside the lift in a different apartment building in another part of London. As he thinks of Phil, and Rob, and Chris; all these people he has viewed as something more than himself, he thinks he is finally beginning to understand. Their problems haven’t ceased to exist. Rob still deals with the absence of a loving family. Chris still hasn’t fully settled in London or in his adult life. Phil still goes to therapy. These are all things Dan is dealing with, too, and yet he punishes himself for it while the same issues only makes him think more of his loved ones.

Despite how much Dan longed for it, the way his family went from bad to worse in his early twenties wasn’t a sudden detour from the path his life was supposed to have taken. It isn’t something that can simply be counted as “over”, or filed away. It isn’t a book with a beginning and a middle and an end that Dan never has to open up again. The remaining anxiety and depressive tendencies and how they have been enhanced by his trauma, isn’t an enemy he can put up for a final battle.

Dan is everything that he is despite of all of these things that are constantly holding him back. They will always be a part of him, but they aren’t all of him.

It doesn’t mean that there can’t be good. He can open himself up to good.

PJ opens the door at Dan’s knock. Dan feels warm inside as PJ laughs at his soaked shoes, and fetches him a dry pair of socks. Phil isn’t here, he is at a meeting, but he should be here soon, PJ tells him.

PJ thinks that Dan should make himself at home as he is still working, and won’t make good company at the moment. Dan takes this opportunity to go in Phil’s room. 

It smells like honey and citrus.

Dan smiles as he sits down on the bed, but then something catches his eye.

An amethyst, on Phil’s bedside table, identical to the one he brought from his childhood home. He picks it up, turns it over, and reads the letters ‘FW’ engraved at the bottom.

Just as he begins to furrow his brow in confusion, he hears the front door open, and Phil’s voice as he greets PJ. Dan puts the crystal back down.

Sometimes, life makes more sense than Dan gives it credit for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Mines (Cloth) by ConcernedApe  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	42. Chapter 42

“Where are you going?”

Dan listens as PJ and Phil talk on the other side of Phil’s bedroom door.

“Nowhere?” Phil answers, but his tone gives him away.

“We were meant to talk about the meeting,” PJ says.

“We will,” Phil hurries to say. “I just have somewhere to be.”

Maybe the guys don’t talk as much as Dan used to think. Phil is being a lot more covert than Dan thought he would be, but then, it sounds completely natural when he does it.

“Alright,” PJ says, obviously suspicious. “Just make sure to check your room first.”

Dan pushes his feet up on the bed, his thighs against his stomach and resting his chin on one knee. He smiles, glancing at the amethyst on the bedside table.

“I meant to-” Phil argues.

“Just go,” PJ says, exasperated.

“You don’t even live here,” Phil complains.

“Don’t I?” PJ shoots back.

They say something else, but it’s duller. Dan can’t make it out. The rain is starting to pick back up, getting louder and louder for each drop that falls.

Phil swings the door open and steps inside. At first, he doesn’t even look at the bed. He immediately turns to his desk and pulls out a drawer which he begins to rummage through. Dan pushes a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing. Phil’s jeans are soaked. His hair is wet, sticking to his forehead. It is as if he senses a presence, though, because he suddenly freezes. He slowly turns his head to look at Dan, and despite obviously already having noticed something, he jumps when he realises that Dan is sitting on his bed.

Dan laughs openly.

“Dan!” Phil squeaks as he catches his breath. He puts a hand over his chest and steadies himself against the desk behind himself. “Scared me to death!”

“You look alive to me,” Dan says.

They look at each other, sporting a goofy smile each.

“Come over here,” Dan whispers.

Phil is just about to take a step when Dan glances at the open door.

Phil stops himself and kicks the door closed. They grin at each other, sharing a little giggle, before Phil rushes towards Dan. He takes his face in his hands and pushes a long, wet kiss on his mouth. Dan’s heart floods with excitement. He has no fucking clue what to do with his hands. He only wants to touch Phil, but he can’t seem to decide on where to start.

He ends up grabbing his ass, only to pull away from the kiss and wipe his hands against Phil’s duvet.

“Bloody hell,” Dan says, laughing. “Take those off.”

Phil throws him a look and the mood switches from the childlike excitement to something clearly more adult. They spent practically all day yesterday in Dan’s bed, touching and figuring each other out, and Dan still feels a blush settle on his cheeks and a nervous flutter in his stomach.

“Okay, jeez,” Phil says when Dan squirms. “You could at least be a gentleman about it.”

“Shut up,” Dan groans, covering his face with his hands.

Phil tugs on Dan’s wrist. One hand falls from his face. Phil is peering down at him. His face has been wiped of the previous smugness and replaced with affection.

“That your answer to everything, is it?” Phil teases.

Something about the ease with which Phil pokes fun at him fills Dan with a confidence he hasn’t known before. In previous sexual situations he hasn’t been shy about doing what he wants, but it’s different with Phil. Dan’s tendency to take control in those moments had more to do with overcompensating for a lack of confidence, while Phil only fills him with real confidence. Dan has nothing to compensate for with him.

Still, Dan surprises himself when he reaches out to unbutton Phil’s jeans, and unzips them. Phil stands completely still, looking down at Dan, as Dan hooks his thumbs over the waistband and pushes them down. Phil wiggles a bit to help out until he has to lean down himself to get his feet out.

The air feels warm in Phil’s room as they look at each other. Phil quirks an eyebrow as Dan tries his hardest not to look down. It reminds him of the clinic, when they somehow were able to communicate silently despite not knowing anything about each other. Dan quirks an eyebrow in response, and Phil laughs.

It spurs Dan on enough to dare to look down. Right. He is still wearing Dan’s black Calvin Kleins and looking better in them than Dan ever could. Dan doesn’t care about that. All he can really pay attention to at the moment is the fact that Phil is half hard already and that the rain has soaked through to the underwear enough to give an excuse for Dan to push them off as well.

He waits, though. He glances back up at Phil, whose smile has faded. His eyes are swimming with such a powerful lust that Dan almost shrinks as he is being subjected to it. There is a sincerity to Phil that feels uncomfortable sometimes, at the same time as Dan wants to dive head first into that feeling. His only qualm is his shyness in actually admitting to enjoying it; being wanting this badly.

“Dan,” Phil says as Dan keeps hesitating.

He cups Dan’s jaw with both hands and leans down to kiss him again.

Phil’s lips are so soft and so perfect. He smells like Dan’s hair gel, still, but surrounded by the honey and citrus of his bedroom, Dan feels completely comfortable with that.

Phil isn’t only giving Dan a kiss right now. He is giving him an out. He is telling him that if he doesn’t want to take it to what this is obviously leading to, he doesn’t have to.

But Dan wants to.

_God_ , he wants to.

He pulls back and strokes Phil’s bare, cold thighs. They are warming rapidly under Dan’s touch.

Dan glances down at Phil’s crotch and licks his lips.

“Can I…?”

“Yeah,” Phil nods hurriedly. “Yes, yeah.”

Dan grabs a hold of Phil’s hips and brings him closer. Phil stands completely still as Dan leans closer and closer to the soft fabric. The room is filled with breath and anticipation. Dan brushes his lips over the hard length. Phil’s breath catches. Dan opens his mouth and sucks softly at the shaft with a gentle push of his teeth.

“Oh, God,” Phil says.

He grabs onto Dan’s hair. He doesn’t push or pull, he simply holds on, as if he would fall over if he didn’t. Dan feels it everywhere, this feeling of being wanted, but not just in this way.

Dan almost feels stupid with how badly he wants to suck Phil’s cock.

They haven’t done that yet. Yesterday was full of hands and grinding and kisses.

Dan pulls Phil out of his pants and sucks ever so gently at the blushing pink cock head. He moans and sinks down, feeling Phil harden for every inch he manages to take.

“Fuck,” Phil moans.

It is incredibly too loud for the fact that PJ is still in the living room, extremely able to hear anything above a whisper through the paper thin walls.

Dan wraps his hand around Phil’s cock and muffles his giggles against the soft skin between his scrotum and his hip. He keeps stroking up and down, slow and sure, enjoying the way Phil’s muscles flutter under his lips.

“Shut up,” Phil whispers.

“Sorry,” Dan whispers back.

He turns his head and directs Phil’s cock to his mouth. He puts the head between his lips and sucks. It is slow and torturous, Dan can tell by how quickly Phil is hardening.

“Dan,” Phil gasps.

Dan pulls off with a wet pop.

“Yeah?”

“I can’t.”

Dan’s heart pounds with a rush of nerves as his stomach sinks.

“I meant,” Phil whisper-laughs, scratching Dan’s scalp affectionately, “I can’t stay quiet.”

Dan leans into the scratches and hums. He only feels a little bit smug.

“Get on the bed,” Dan says.

Phil doesn’t ask why. He sits on the bed next to Dan and accepts his kisses. Dan grabs Phil’s dick again and strokes it, going harder for every one. He still feels nervous though Phil melts into every touch, gasping and moaning, his muscles tightening like a bow on a string. 

It isn’t like he is scared that Phil won’t want him, or that he won’t enjoy this. It has more to do with the newness of every touch. Every sensation and every sound still feels like some kind of first, and as Dan catalogues them in his mind, it almost overwhelms him. He feels strange, talking when they are like this. As if doing so would somehow break the spell.

Regardless, he has a question to ask, and he feels motivated enough to hear the answer to push through that strangeness.

“Do you want my hand or my mouth?”

The whisper is so quiet he thinks that Phil can’t make out the words at first, but then Phil pulls away and puts his hand over Dan’s between his legs to stop the movement.

“What do you want to do?” Phil asks.

Phil exudes confidence, but right now he is small and nervous. His eyes are so big as they struggle to look straight at Dan’s. Dan wants to take all of that nervousness and throw it away. He wants to fill Phil with the same confidence Dan gets from Phil.

In passing, Dan remembers something else Phil told him yesterday.

_I kind of like it when you tell me what to do._

“I want to suck you,” Dan whispers.

He strokes Phil despite of his hold.

“Can I?” Dan adds.

Phil groans and turns his head. It is answer enough for Dan. He pushes Phil by the hips until he is lying down on the bed. Dan glances at the door and then back at Phil’s face. He grabs blindly behind himself to find a green and blue checkered pillow, which he hands to Phil.

Phil frowns in confusion. Dan blushes.

“Bite it,” he says. “If…”

He nods towards the door.

“Fuck,” Phil says under his breath.

“Quiet,” Dan grins.

He leans down and takes Phil back in his mouth. Phil lies flat on the bed and covers his face with the pillow. Dan would love to look at Phil’s face as he reacts to the feeling, but it isn’t important enough right now for Dan to ask. What he wants to do, most of all, is pleasure Phil without getting caught.

As every moan is muffled by the pillow, the wet sound of suction as Dan bobs up and down Phil’s cock seems that much louder. It feels a bit dirty, in the best way. Dan gets into it. He sucks harder and takes him deeper, exhaling a big breath through his nostrils as his insides flare with his own needs. It feels like a long time, but it really isn’t. Only a couple minutes pass before Phil’s balls have tightened up and the skin on his cock is tight, and Dan can’t do anything to prolong it. He pulls his mouth off and wanks him with purpose, only for Phil’s come to hit his chin immediately.

It is filthy and delicious, and though they’re muffled, there is no mistaking the helpless moaning from under the pillow. Dan feels hot all over, overwhelmed with an urge to see Phil’s face again.

He moves up Phil’s body and pulls the pillow off and away from his face. Phil’s eyes are glazed over. His cheeks are flushed and there is sweat at his hairline. There is an intensity in their shared eye contact that Phil breaks by grabbing Dan by the back of his neck and pushing him down.

“Oh, my God,” he moans before their mouths collide in a messy kiss.

“Phil.”

“That was- ,” Phil sounds amazed, “ -you’re so good at that.”

Pride blooms in Dan’s chest. He kisses Phil again, but slower. His own needs abate and he wills himself into the moment. Not into the next thing, nowhere else but into processing the way Phil’s lips feel against his own, and how heavy and pretty Phil is post orgasm.

“Really?” Dan asks.

“The best I’ve had,” Phil says. “Seriously.”

Dan grabs the pillow and fits it under his head. Phil rolls over. Their legs tangle together as they share it, and look into each other’s eyes. Dan really can’t get enough of Phil’s.

“So you like blow jobs,” Dan says as his mind wanders.

“Everyone likes blow jobs,” Phil argues.

He blushes, not looking straight into Dan’s eyes. He isn’t the most comfortable talking openly about these things, Dan can tell. It feels a bit like the coffee date, when Dan found out that Phil doesn’t like to talk about his job or joke about death. Dan traces a finger along Phil’s jawline and sighs.

“Do you know how hot you are?” Dan asks.

Phil squirms. It is subdued, not entirely obvious, but the smile on Phil’s face isn’t only that of pride but mixed with embarrassment. He has nothing to be embarrassed about.

“Am I?” Phil giggles.

He is trying very hard to feel comfortable about this. Dan’s heart aches a little bit, watching Phil shrink beside him.

“Gorgeous,” Dan says. “I’ve always thought so.”

Phil shakes his head, another one of those nervous laughs escaping him.

“Stop,” he says. “No one thinks that.”

Dan says nothing. Eventually, Phil dares to fully look back at him. There are many walls that Phil puts up. He has one for his friends. He has one at the clinic. He has another when they’re outside in a busy London, trying not to look gay. Dan thought he was an exception to those walls. He could very clearly see a difference in the way Phil holds himself when there are other people around and when is alone with Dan.

There is another wall, though. Dan realises this because when Phil looks at him now, it is with a face full of so much vulnerability that it is almost shocking. He doesn’t look sad, per se. But this isn’t one of those moments of feeling that so easily seems to pass by on his face. No, this vulnerability stays. He is handing it over to Dan, putting it in his hands, asking him to do something with it.

For a moment, an image of a pixelated night time and two glowing crystals being exchanged in the dark passes by in Dan’s mind.

Dan doesn’t think he has been trusted with something like this before.

What Dan has to offer in return is a smile. He looks straight into Phil’s naked eyes and he doesn’t feel scared. Rather, he feels relieved. He feels honoured.

“I like you a lot,” Phil whispers.

He says it so easily. So easily, and yet so full of emotion.

“I like you, too.”

The spectator is quiet.

Phil extends his arm over Dan’s torso. They lie silently, the exchange still hanging in the air.

It’s so easy.

Dan is feeling something and there are no barriers to find between himself and that emotion. Sometimes it is jarring, to realise that he is able to stay in the moment. To know that something that he used to be terrified of only makes him feel nice for now. Dan thinks back on his phone call earlier, the emotions that it brought up, and how it made him fear what opinion Phil would have of him if he has to deal with him for long enough.

It is so different, thinking of these things while he is next to Phil. Dan doesn’t feel as convinced that Phil would turn his nose up at his chaos. Instead, Phil hands some of his own insecurity over to Dan and asks him to take care of it. Dan feels ready and capable of doing that. He wants to do that. 

Dan isn’t the only one that feels seen, when they are like this.

“Why do you go to therapy, Phil?” Dan asks.

Phil takes Dan’s hands in his own and smiles bitterly.

“Do you really want—”

He glances down, like he is waiting to return the favour. Dan shakes his head.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he says. “But if you want to, I’ll listen.”

“It’s not exactly a secret,” Phil says.

He speaks slowly, as if he is contemplating every word.

“You don’t have to,” Dan reminds him.

He knows damn well how hard it is to open up about something to someone before you’re ready. Phil kisses Dan’s knuckles. Some of the tension Dan hadn’t realised was there dissipates.

“I had a mental breakdown,” Phil says, “as I told you.”

Dan waits. He watches Phil look down at their hands.

“Hey,” Dan says.

He tilts Phil’s chin up. Phil is slow to meet his gaze.

“I’m not scared of this,” Dan says once he does.

Phil’s face twitches. The corners of his mouth pull down and he squeezes his eyes shut, seeming to will the onslaught of emotions away.

Dan scoots closer and wraps an arm around him. He smooths it over Phil’s back and then up to caress the back of his head. Phil relaxes inside the touch.

“I’ve come so far about this and I’m still,” Phil sighs, “ashamed.”

This time, when he looks into Dan’s eyes, there is nothing crushing or scared to find. Dan scratches Phil’s scalp and massages it in a soothing motion. Phil takes a deep breath.

“Why?” Dan asks.

“I’m scared you’ll think less of me if I tell you,” Phil admits.

It hurts to see the truth behind those words so plainly in Phil’s averted gaze.

“Phil,” Dan says.

The assertive tone makes Phil look back at him immediately.

“I won’t,” he says. “I promise you I won’t.”

“I know,” Phil sighs. “Like, I _know_ that. But sometimes it’s like my brain doesn’t want to know that? Still?”

“It’s trying to protect you,” Dan says.

A flicker of sadness moves across Phil’s features.

“I mean, it’s doing a shit job at it, quite frankly,” Dan elaborates, “but it is trying.”

Phil laughs. It is wonderful to hear.

“The short version is that I had been overworking myself for a long time,” Phil says. “Then my dad got seriously ill and…”

He sighs.

“My brain broke,” Phil says. “I don’t know how else to explain it. All of a sudden, everything became too much to handle. It started with these fainting spells and then it turned into an inability to focus on anything. My body became physically weak. My family was in a difficult situation, we weren’t sure that my dad was going to survive, and I wasn’t able to be there for them through any of it.”

Dan’s touches are faint, but he thinks he notices their effect in the way Phil’s words stop rushing out.

“Instead of helping, I gave my family more to worry about.”

There’s a quiet rage, making Dan’s heart beat hard as Phil finishes. Part of him wants to yell at him for saying these things. He wants to punch away the shame and guilt to make sure it really goes away. Phil must be able to tell, because when he meets Dan’s eyes again, there is something settled about his expression.

“I know that that isn’t true,” Phil says. “But it’s something I’m still struggling with, even years later.”

Dan nods. Phil might as well be telling his story, just in a different situation. He finds some surprise in knowing that Phil has felt all these feelings that Dan has dealt with. The guilt, the shame, the feeling like you let everyone down because of your own issues. It doesn't feel like Phil. Phil is so secure. He isn't damaged like Dan is. And at the same time, it feels absolutely fitting to know that they have both dealt with this. Again, they have found each other in a place they never expected to see anyone else in.

“So, that’s why I go to therapy. I know I don’t deserve to feel like this. I shouldn’t punish myself for something that was out of my control. I hadn’t experienced enough mental health problems beforehand to recognise the signs of working myself to exertion. Which is ironic, because…”

He pauses. Dan stretches his mouth into some likeness of a smile. Right. Work.

“You don’t deserve to feel like that,” Dan says with emotion. “You really, really don’t.”

“I guess that’s why I feel so strongly about it when I see those things in you,” Phil says. “It almost makes me angry. You are such a wonderful person.”

Now it’s Dan’s turn to feel slightly embarrassed.

“Thank you for telling me,” Dan says.

Phil nods.

“Can I kiss you?” Dan asks.

There’s a small laugh in response.

“Of course,” Phil says.

He does. It isn’t one of those deep, lustful kisses Dan has been getting used to. Instead, their mouths remain closed, and they pull away quickly.

Dan hates eye contact, usually. He is good at pretending to make eye contact, but he never really, truly looks into another person’s eyes unless he is forced to. When he is with Phil, he can’t not stare straight into those blue and yellow eyes. There are no threats to find there. Phil already sees past some of Dan’s barriers. Dan doesn’t have to hide.

“Thank you for telling me,” Dan says. “I know it’s hard.”

“I wanted to,” Phil insists.

The silence begs for one question only, and Dan is afraid of it. Regardless, Phil asks.

“What about you?”

Dan’s mind goes blank. For a second, he forgets about his entire life. It is bliss.

It comes back to him, though. It comes back, but it is the altered version, the answer he gives people that he doesn’t want to let in too close. Dan’s story is sad enough without all the horrific details. He should fight the impulse to smooth over it, but he can’t. He hasn’t actually told anyone, he realises, apart from Susanne. He doesn’t know if he can.

Phil is open and kind. He smiles. 

He is worth more than the censored version, but that is the only version Dan thinks that he is able to give him at the moment. 

The amethyst is forgotten, where it remains on Phil’s bedside table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Retrograde by James Blake  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)
> 
> This week, there was not only one, but _two_ amazing art works made, inspired by Monochrome!
> 
> The first one is [this amazing piece](https://twitter.com/amgsunshine0114/status/1192774055172222976) made by @amgsunshine0114 on twitter! 
> 
> The second one is [this beautiful drawing](https://twitter.com/zachstaph/status/1193386999064887297) by @zachstaph on twitter! 
> 
> I'm absolutely overwhelmed by their generosity in sharing their art with all of us just because of this thing I'm writing. I am fully blown away by their talent and hard work. Thank you, thank you, thank you both.
> 
> Make sure to go give love to both @amgsunshine0114 and @zachstaph's beautiful creations <3


	43. Chapter 43

As a child, Dan learned that solitude was a reward.

Being around his parents meant tension. Without a single word being exchanged, Dan could feel the weight of their expectations on him. This didn’t extend into any actual involvement in his life. Dan was expected to do things perfectly, keep in the background, and never ask for anything. Something as simple as his parents driving him somewhere or coming to a parent teacher conference was a huge effort on their part.

Dan was made to feel like an inconvenience at a young age. He never even thought about it until he started his sessions with Susanne. His mind was clouded with the worst of it. The drinking, the veiled insults, being painted as a villain when all he did was try to help. Talking about his childhood didn’t seem relevant. Dan was sure he was over the problems he had back then. Things sucked, but after Mum’s drinking problems, Dan was bitterly amused by how upset he had been about things that weren’t at all as pressing and acute as the very real dangers Mum put herself in.

It turned out that talking about his childhood was very relevant, after all. He hadn’t been treated as a person. He hadn’t had anyone to confide in. He hadn’t been allowed to act on his emotions. Everything had to be pushed down in order to make sure Mum never got upset. Dad stood between the two of them like a barrier of rage, twisting any and all of Mum’s issues into somehow being Dan’s fault.

He was too loud and too quiet. He was too demanding and too isolated. He was at home too much and not enough.

Dan’s only time of comfort was found when he was alone. When his bedroom door was closed, no one could expect anything of him. He couldn’t disappoint anyone. His life was filled with friends that weren’t really friends and a family that only showed him love when he was as small and convenient as possible. If someone asked him how he was feeling, they never wanted to hear anything other than ‘good’, regardless of what the truth was.

Part of the work Dan has been trying to do with Susanne has been about training his brain into understanding that he isn’t unwanted by default. Some people want to know how he is really feeling when they ask. Some people don’t think that he is too much of anything. Some people simply like him for being who he is.

That is more difficult to accept than it sounds like. Dan has been burned enough times to have become scared of putting his trust into other people.

Even with Phil in his arms, with all of that vulnerability put in Dan’s hands, Dan hesitates. He never had an evenly balanced emotional relationship with anyone before. Logically, Dan is convinced that Phil really wants to know when he asks why Dan goes to therapy. Again, he is caught in the confusion of knowing what the problem is and not being able to apply that knowledge to his real life.

The impulse to share, and tell the truth, still makes him feel like he is doing something wrong. Something to be punished for. Something for Dad to roll his eyes at, claiming he is weighing down their family with his trivial issues, only to be punished in the same way when he has bottled up things for so long that he can’t contain it and it all spills out on the floor.

Thinking about his dad makes Dan angry, though. It makes him angry enough to want to go against everything he has ever wanted Dan to do and be.

He doesn’t want to share with Phil as a result of that kind of anger.

Dan’s heart is beating hard as he considers what the hell he should say. He is so caught up in his internal world that he forgets his surroundings until he feels Phil’s hand on his cheek. It is so soft and tentative. Faint, not forth-coming. Despite this, it slows down the swirling in Dan’s head. It puts him back in the present.

The present is lovely. The present is Phil’s still slightly flushed cheeks after Dan made him come, and the blue and yellow of his eyes. Dan trembles as the lid keeping his self imposed forbidden emotions in their sealed box moves the tiniest bit, showing some of what is behind it.

“I’m not scared of this, either,” Phil whispers.

He brushes his thumb along the corner of Dan’s mouth. Dan inhales a shaky breath.

“I am,” Dan says. “Not of you - never of you, but…”

Phil’s mouth twists ever so slightly.

“... myself,” Dan concludes. “I’m not - I’m too much to handle.”

“Dan.”

Dan closes his eyes and forces himself to only focus on the way Phil’s hand feels on his cheek.

“You sharing that doesn’t force me to ‘handle’ anything,” Phil says. “I know you can handle yourself. Your life is yours. I only want to be a part of it.”

The noise Dan releases as he breathes out is something between a sob and a laugh.

“How do you always say things like that?” Dan asks as he opens his eyes back up.

Phil’s eyes are hooded. The small smile on his face is all comfort.

“It’s very easy to be kind to you,” Phil says. “I could never treat you any other way. You’re too good for that.”

In Phil’s eyes, Dan is everything he ever wished he could be.

It is wildly freeing in one way, and terrifying in another.

It makes tears start to roll down Dan’s cheeks before he has time to stop them.

“I’ll let it go,” Phil says as he wipes Dan’s cheek with his thumb. “You don’t have to share anything before you’re ready.”

The forbidden emotions are plain to see. Still, any words of explanation are trapped inside his chest, impossible to get out. All Dan has to offer is confusion, chaos that no one can help him ease because he never tells people enough about it for them to be able to.

And yet, Phil is so comforting. He says everything Dan never realised he needed to hear. Phil glows purple. Dan feels so utterly protected by him that it makes him feel like the power of the amethyst is real, but it isn’t contained within the crystal on the bedside table. It is alive in Phil, precious and pure and beautiful.

“Do you want something different?” Phil asks.

“Something different,” Dan echoes.

“Do you want to be distracted?” Phil clarifies.

Dan shakes his head.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t want to hide from you.”

The truth of the words feel heavy on Dan’s tongue.

“You’re not hiding,” Phil says. “I can tell how much this means to you.”

Again, Phil sees Dan as something completely different than anyone else has ever done. Dan’s emotions get to a point of not being able to be suppressed, but he doesn’t always feel strong enough to elaborate on them. That fact makes people often think of Dan as being secretive. Deliberately withholding things that would make everything easier if he only shared.

Phil doesn’t care that he isn’t sharing. He thinks of Dan’s emotional reaction as enough information for now.

It is startling to feel so seen.

“Okay,” Dan says. “Okay, I want a distraction.”

Phil kisses him.

It starts out soft, but it goes harder as it grows in desperation. Dan meets it with an equal amount of passion. Unlike how Dan would use sex as a distraction with Jimmy, touching Phil and being touched back feels like an extension of sharing themselves with one another rather than a detour.

“What do you need?” Phil asks as he undoes the button of Dan’s jeans.

He strokes a finger down Dan’s shaft over his underwear. The simple touch is enough for Dan’s mind to go blank. All he knows he wants is more, so much more, and that ‘more’ is so blissfully undefined. He is putting himself in Phil’s hands, trusting him to lead him to something good.

“God, you’re sensitive,” Phil exhales with admiration.

The fact that Dan feels capable of being on the receiving end of that admiration almost feels like more than the admiration itself. Phil makes it so easy to be able to do that. When they are like this, there are no layers. Dan can’t hide and he doesn’t want to.

Phil is braver today, too. After they get Dan’s jeans and underwear off he strokes him, but he doesn’t stay doing that for long. He explores lower, squeezing the balls and just below. It feels loving in how slowly he goes. It is soft enough for Dan to thrust into. Just when it feels perfect, Phil’s middle finger teases its way between Dan’s cheeks. Dan gasps, eyes widening. Phil is right above him, watching every reaction on his face like they are something to look at.

Dan keeps eye contact as Phil stops the movement and nudges deeper, stroking ever so gently at Dan’s rim. Dan’s hips thrust up involuntarily as the touch strikes through him, like a bolt of lighting.

The sound he releases is loud enough for not only PJ to hear. Dan thinks idly of the neighbours and finds that this feels too good to care. He covers his eyes with one hand as he laughs, a warm blush taking over his face and neck. Phil laughs faintly. He leans down and sucks on Dan’s neck. It’s full of teeth that sink into his skin, hard and unrelenting in comparison to the ever so faint strokes Phil circles around his rim.

“Oh,” Dan exhales.

It isn’t that Dan has a particular thing for biting, but it’s the passion with which Phil goes for it that does it for him. Like he has been waiting to do this, and feeling unable to hold back now that he finally has the chance. Dan gets a hand around himself. He squeezes his own balls in the same way that Phil did before. He thrusts into it, hips rolling relentlessly as Phil pushes the tiniest bit inside while his thumb pushes just below Dan’s balls.

“Oh, fuck,” Dan groans. “I’m--”

Phil kisses him.

“Yeah?” he asks.

The bright blue of his eyes looks impossibly brighter. They are filled with an eagerness that makes Dan feel grounded, even in the middle of all of this intensity. They are in the moment, together.

“Yeah,” Dan says. “ _Fuck_ yes, put it in me.”

He doesn’t have time to feel ashamed of such a blunt request before Phil obeys, and it starts to thunder inside of him. Dan switches to stroke himself quickly, making him curl making him curl his toes time and time again as the orgasm approaches. Dan spreads his legs as Phil fucks him with two fingers.

“Does that feel good?” Phil asks.

Dan is breathing so quickly that he almost can’t respond.

“Yes, yes,” Dan moans. “Oh, fuck, please keep doing that.”

It hits him when Phil pushes his fingers out all the way only to push inside hard, deeper than before, as he bites Dan’s jaw. The entire world seems to be painted in the rainbow of Phil, citrus and honey all around, the warmth of his body covering him. Dan turns his head to the side and breathes hard as the orgasm subsides. Phil kisses the spot he bit as he pulls his fingers out. He kisses along Dan’s jaw and sucks at his earlobe. He nibbles on the shell of his ear, seemingly wanting to taste any part of Dan he could possibly put inside his mouth.

The thought of that is so hot it’s earth shattering.

“Phil,” Dan sighs, turning back, where Phil is waiting to accept Dan’s mouth against his own.

They kiss for a little while as Dan’s body swims in endorphins.

“I love how loud you are,” Phil sighs.

“PJ’s here,” Dan remembers with a fright.

“I couldn’t bring myself to stop you from making those sounds,” Phil confesses sheepishly.

He isn’t just sheepish, though. Somehow, Phil manages to look smug at the same time.

“Idiot,” Dan blurts out, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he smiles. “Self indulgent idiot.”

“Hey,” Phil grins and slaps Dan’s arm with absolutely no impact. “You would have done the same thing.”

“Actually, I didn’t, remember?” Dan says. He pats the pillow supporting their heads for emphasis.

Phil only rolls his eyes when he remembers.

“I bet you loved that, though,” he says, the insecurities from before washed away.

Dan bites his bottom lip as he blushes. Now it’s his turn to feel sheepish. And smug.

Instead of a snarky retort, he kisses Phil again. They shed their layers all over again as they indulge in the feeling.

-

They only think of stopping when the phone on Phil’s desk starts to buzz relentlessly. Phil groans, as always so reluctant to leave. He gets up from bed and grabs it, but he doesn’t put it next to his ear.

“Shit,” Phil mutters under his breath.

Dan sits up, crossing his legs to cover himself. He can’t stop himself from staring at Phil only wearing a jumper and socks.

“What is it?” Dan asks.

When Phil looks up, the worried frown disappears.

“I was going to talk to PJ about the meeting,” he says.

Instead of getting dressed and leaving, Phil comes back to sit next to Dan. He gazes at different parts of Dan’s face with intention, until he stops at Dan’s mouth. Dan breathes out some nerves as Phil looks up into his eyes.

“Should I go?” Dan asks.

_’What is this thing about your job?’_ is what Dan really wants to ask.

Everything about Phil makes sense, apart from the secrecy surrounding his work.

“Stay over?” Phil suggests.

Dan hesitates.

“Or I could stay at yours?” Phil says. “Or not at all.”

Phil laughs at himself, embarrassed. Dan takes his hand, taking hold of those fluttering insecurities until Phil calms.

“Do you know something, Phil?”

Phil shakes his head.

“Being alone is one of my favourite things, but I think I like hanging out with you more.”

Dan’s heart is in his throat. He never actually thought about it, but as he says it he understands that it is true. He not only enjoys Phil’s company, but he finds that he likes himself when he is with Phil. Phil’s mouth opens in some surprise, but the moment is interrupted by a loud knocking on the door.

“Phil, seriously,” PJ’s voice is heard from the other side.

Phil rolls his eyes and smiles. Dan giggles.

“I’m coming,” Phil calls back, exasperated.

“God, you guys are relentless,” PJ sighs.

Phil goes fully red in the face.

“When I get out there I’m going to beat you up with my big muscles,” he says.

Dan covers his mouth as he laughs.

“Whatever, just,” PJ says, “wrap up whatever you’ve got going on in there and get out here, okay? I do have to go home at some point.”

They listen as PJ walks away. Dan puts a hand on Phil’s thigh. They kiss, and as they do Phil’s fingers reach Dan’s hair. Dan sighs as Phil massages his scalp.

Phil pulls back.

“Sorry,” he says. “Fuck. You’re too…”

He gestures ineffectively.

Dan grins. He glances at the crystal on the bedside table. If there is one thing he wants to talk about before he leaves, it’s that. Phil turns to see what he is looking at.

For a moment, it feels like the room has been emptied of air.

“Oh, yeah,” Phil says when the oxygen returns.

He takes the crystal in his hand. Dan watches with some odd fascination as Phil fiddles with it. He turns it over to watch the different ways the light reflects on the sides.

“I think you left this here?” Phil says as he hands it over.

Dan takes it.

“When you slept over?” Phil explains. “When Chris…”

He shakes his head.

“Anyway, it was in my bed when I got back.”

It clicks, then. Dan hadn’t even realised that he lost the crystal. He feels stupid for being so adamntly sure that Phil must also be a fan of Fall Whisperer.

“Oh,” Dan says. “Right, yeah. Thank you.”

He sounds disappointed, breathless. He has no reason to be disappointed.

When he looks up at Phil, there is more than confusion at Dan’s reaction in his eyes. Phil is trying to conceal it. A wall has come back up, making him almost impossible to read. There is something more to it, though, and the only thing Dan can interpret it as is fear.

“It’s this thing for a video game I like,” Dan shrugs. “Fall Whisperer. Ever played it?”

“Yeah,” Phil nods. “I thought I recognised it.”

Phil gets up. He gets a pair of green boxers from his drawer and puts them on. Dan scrambles to put on his own underwear and jeans.

“It’s pretty cool with the metaphors and stuff,” Dan says. “I don’t know. I don’t really get stuff like that usually.”

He doesn’t know why he feels the need to explain himself. For some reason, something has changed between them and Dan wants to make it better. He doesn’t tell people about what that game means to him, usually. It sounds odd coming out, now. Like he hasn’t practiced it enough.

“Metaphors?” Phil asks as he pulls his jeans on.

He smiles. Dan smiles back. It starts to feel easier again.

“Yeah,” Dan says. “The crystals? The shadows? The Shadow Realm? It’s obviously all a metaphor.”

Phil stands up and buttons his jeans.

“For what?”

He sounds genuinely interested in hearing Dan’s answer. Dan feels uncomfortable, in a way. Like telling someone what this game really means to him is too personal.

“Mental illness,” Dan says. “Coping with unexpected life events. Trying to live when you want to die.”

The last part is blurted out before he thinks about it. Dan cringes at himself. Phil’s hands twitch nervously at his sides as he processes the words.

“Huh,” he says. “I never thought about it like that.”

“You should replay it,” Dan says.

He stands up and takes Phil’s nervous hands in his own. Phil looks up at him. The wall has started to come back down.

“It’s so much better when you think about what it all could mean,” Dan elaborates.

The crystal is held in their joined hands. It seems important, for some reason, that they are holding it together.

Phil doesn’t respond. Instead, he kisses Dan one last time.

“You should tell me more about it later, yeah?” he says. “I have to talk to PJ before he kills me.”

Dan laughs.

“Okay,” he says.

They let go of one another. Dan puts the crystal in his jeans pocket.

“I’ll wait here?” he says.

“You better,” Phil grins.

Dan watches as Phil opens the door and closes it behind himself. Dan puts his hand in his pocket and rubs his thumb against the side of the crystal that reminds him of Phil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Terrified by Guster  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	44. Chapter 44

When Dan said he would wait for Phil, he didn’t realise that it would take more than half an hour.

The time ticks by. For the first time in a long time he has caught up on all the social media pages he frequents. There hasn’t been any major developments within the fandom. The strange discussions about what is and what isn’t appropriate now that Dye and White’s romantic relationship has been confirmed are still going. The arguments are the same, and it seems every part of the fandom is talking in circles without even realising it themselves.

There are insults being thrown left, right and centre, and despite this, the group chat is eerily silent. Dan can’t see much of Morgan at all online. Jamie is the only one that is still tweeting publicly, actively avoiding the discussions, but some vague resentment still manages to slip through.

It makes Dan’s stomach hurt. He can’t not take Jamie’s vague tweets personally, seeing as he hasn’t really been active since right before the stream. She keeps calling out for people she knows agree with her but won’t say anything. Mostly, though, Dan worries about Morgan. Morgan, who talked him down from a panic attack while he was drunk in a bathroom stall at a gay club, who he hasn’t messaged a single time since.

When things like this goes on, Morgan usually tries to shower the fandom with her unrelenting positivity. Without it, Dan’s timeline looks that much more grim.

Dan opens their conversation up.

**achromatic_bot** : hi i miss you <3

If she hasn’t answered by tomorrow morning, Dan is going to make sure to call her. He may be caught up in everything that is happening around him now, but he hasn’t forgotten about the one person that was truly there for him when he was at his worst points. Morgan, like Phil, has this ability to enhance the brightness of the crystals and reveal what lies beneath the darkness. That is usually a two way street, but Dan has been lacking in that department way too much as of late.

Dan stretches on the bed and yawns. Phil must have been to an important meeting if it is taking him this long to discuss it with PJ.

Just as he is about to get under the covers and get some sleep in, his phone buzzes. Dan grabs the phone quickly, anticipating Morgan’s message.

But it isn’t Morgan.

**Dad** : Your mum and I are visiting on Monday next week.

Dan’s heart is in his mouth. He tries to swallow it down, but he can’t. That type of anger that Dan hates to feel prickles his skin now and he feels powerless to stop that feeling from coming on.

Dad doesn’t think to ask. He just assumes that Dan isn’t busy.

**Dan** : you could ask you know

**Dad** : You’re not going out drinking this weekend as well, are you?

Dan closes his burning eyes and tries to breathe.

**Dan** : that’s not the question i thought you should ask

There is no response. Dan stares at their conversation for a few seconds, and as he does, the outside world comes into view.

It is ironic how something so familiar can feel so out of place. So startling. So uncharacteristic to himself, when in reality, it hasn’t been long since Dan felt this. The air is suddenly hard to breathe and the phone screen moves in waves as it comes crashing through him. Dan puts the phone down next to himself on the bed and closes his eyes. That gives him a moment worth of peace before he starts shaking. His mouth dries out. His tongue feels too big for his mouth. 

Dan leans forwards and supports his elbows on his knees. When he moves his fingers through his hair he feels the sweat gathering there. Dan’s body doesn’t feel like his own. Phil’s room is hard to make out. Trying to look at the items around himself does nothing to put him back in the present. Instead, it makes him shake harder as fear rises in his throat and his grip on anything real is lost. Everything falls through his hands like ghosts. He is helpless to climb back up.

Purple and green and crystals and shadows and Phil and Jimmy and Mum and Dad and Colin and Grandma and Susanne and work and--

None of it soothes his mind. None of it is real, in this moment. Dan wants to cry but he can’t. It feels like someone pressed the reset button on his mind and it reminds him of why he is in this place in life. With nothing to really work towards, because the idea of the smallest amount of pressure is crushing.

It is idiotic, when Dan really thinks about it. Because nothing has really happened. The simple reminder of the fact that something other than Phil exists has Dan spiralling. That shouldn’t be enough to cause such a big reaction.

He remembers why he protects himself, now. Why real emotions can’t be felt by someone like him. Why existence is only existence and not life in Dan’s world. 

Dan doesn’t want to die. Dan wants to live and he doesn’t know how to. The meaning of his life, right now, is to keep moving forward. He isn’t done - he has so much to do and learn and see and experience. He is embarking on something with Phil that both of them have yet to name but feels good all the same. There are people around him that care about him, that want him around.

Despite this, part of Dan wants to die right now. The darkness has appeared in his mind and it looks appealing. Those wispy black limbs don’t have to grab on hard because Dan is not fighting back. He doesn’t know how to fight back when he feels like this.

Like everything is spinning around him and he floats away, not in control, simply spectating.

He doesn’t want that.

He can’t have that.

The world looks fuzzy around him, but Dan takes his phone back up and closes out of the conversation with Dad while deliberately not thinking about what was said. He opens the one he has with Phil. He catches himself almost smiling, looking at the last message Phil sent him. 

A rain cloud, a lightning bolt, and a black heart.

**Dan** : come to your room for a sec?

There’s a tension right in the middle of his chest that threatens to smash his glass heart into pieces and he holds his breath, willing it away. It doesn’t work, but as he releases the breath he was holding, he is forced to take a deep breath in. His stomach fills with air and the tension eases the tiniest bit.

Dan never asks, right when he is feeling the worst of it. But he can’t take feeling the way he feels right now, at least not alone. For once in his life, Dan actually asks for the thing he normally feels completely undeserving of.

-

The emerald has a calming effect. It is the one that Dye needs the most.

Dye and White both have crystals that they need and crystals they represent. That wasn’t explained until the first time Dan collected the amethyst and brought it back to Dye’s cabin. There wasn’t a cut scene, but when Dan right clicked Dye to speak after he put the newly collected crystals in their box, he said something new.

They always do, when a new type of crystal has been collected, but this time had been different.

“The _Amethyst_?” Dye had asked, as his portrait showed him sporting an excited smile. “Oh! That one makes me feel right at home!”

Dan had right clicked him again, but the same dialogue appeared. He right clicked White instead.

“The _Amethyst_ has the power of protection,” White had said. “It keeps you safe in even your worst moments. When your world has been reduced, the Amethyst opens it back up.”

Dan hadn’t known what to make of that, really. He right clicked Dye.

“That one is mine,” Dye said. “I don’t know much about crystals, but I know that. I can feel it.”

Dan right clicked White.

“That’s because it’s your _Core Crystal_ ,” White said. “Everyone has one. It means that you are able to infuse it with even more power, making it go to its full effect.”

Without a right click this time, Dye chimed in.

“This crystal business might be a bit fun after all,” he said.

“Some people need certain types of crystals more than they need others,” White went on to explain. “It can be the same as your Core Crystal, and if it is, you’re in luck. But that’s not usually the case. For me, I need the Amethyst the most, but it isn’t my Core Crystal.”

Dan’s jaw had dropped the first time he played and White revealed this. This came before the moment when they exchanged the crystals, but Dan got a feeling then, that Dye and White’s connection had more depth than he had thought.

“What is your Core Crystal?” Dye asked.

“I’ll tell you when Dan finds it,” White said.

It didn’t take long until that happened. The very next day, Dan had gone looking for crystals, motivated by the possibility of knowing which one was White’s. He didn’t expect to find it right away, but when he came back with a bunch of quartz, opals, and peridots he also put away one new one; the emerald.

When Dan right clicked Dye then, his portrait’s expression couldn’t be described as anything other than shell-shocked.

“Would you bring me that bright green one?” Dye asked.

Dan went back to fetch the emerald, and handed it over to him.

“Oh,” Dye said. “I like this one a lot.”

White didn’t have any dialogue about it until later, when Dan found him sitting beneath his favourite tree in the garden. Dye was still inside the cabin, dusting White’s armour.

Dan right clicked White, expecting the usual spiel on how badly they needed to get more crystals to enter the other realm. Instead, White said something completely different.

“Don’t tell Dye, but the _Emerald_ is my Core Crystal.”

Dan right clicked him again.

“It seems like the Emerald is the one that Dye needs the most,” White said. “It shouldn’t surprise me. It has a calming effect. It seems like a strange coincidence, though, that our Core Crystals are the ones the other needs.”

It would have made Dan laugh if he hadn’t felt choked up about it, when he first played the game. How much more blatantly obvious could it be that they meant more to each other than they let on? It wasn’t being revealed in explicit terms, but given how important the crystals were proving to be to the progression of the game, Dan didn’t need to know more to realise that there was something going on between them.

When Dan considered it, he couldn’t decide on what could be his own Core Crystal. All of them have a positive effect, and most of the time, Dan feels unable to give anything positive to the world.

But he didn’t have to think long to realise which crystal he needs. What kind of affection he craves. 

Within the fandom, it is viewed as uninspired and cliché to choose one of the main crystals for either category, but Dan doesn’t care about that. He has always related to Dye’s issues the most, after all. 

-

It is a bit stupid, Dan thinks after he texts Phil. The reason he texted him is only because in Dan’s mind, Phil’s core crystal is the amethyst. And Dan needs his amethyst right now. He needs to feel protected from all the swirling thoughts in his brain and the fear that settles so deeply in his gut.

Phil doesn’t respond to the text message but he comes back not long after Dan sent it.

They only need to exchange a look for Phil to see that something has changed since they saw each other last. Dan can tell from his worried frown the moment their eyes lock.

Dan immediately feels a pull back to himself, and away from the dissociative state his brain so easily succumbs to.

“What’s happened?” Phil asks.

He sits down on the bed next to Dan. His tone is so serious, almost to an unsettling degree. After getting used to Phil’s usual tactic of not asking the question and simply being what Dan needs, it is startling. Dan’s heart riots inside his chest as his throat dries out.

Somewhere inside feeling unsettled and startled, a mostly forgotten part of him feels grateful to have his emotions be taken seriously.

“My dad texted me,” Dan says. “Him and Mum are visiting next week.”

He feels so stupid. Some people would give anything to have parents that willingly come to visit them. Dan, on the other hand, crumbles at the very idea of it.

“Come here,” Phil says.

He settles against the pillows behind them. Dan doesn’t need to even consider it. He wraps his arms around him and Phil goes gently, resting his head against Dan’s chest. The world keeps spinning, but Dan didn’t expect to feel better. He only wants company.

“It’s okay,” Phil whispers as he looks up into Dan’s eyes. “You’re okay.”

The yellow and blue is so bright, but in this moment, the only colour Dan sees is purple. He breathes in a shallow breath.

“Am I?”

His voice sounds pathetic. Phil cups Dan’s jaw and nods.

“I’ll make sure of it.”

Dan feels himself reenter the present. The world is tilted on its side, every bit of stimulus is entirely too much, but Phil’s assured touch is just enough. Dan puts his hand over Phil’s on the side of his face to keep it there as he closes his eyes, feeling the way his breathing starts to even out. Phil’s thumb moves in soothing circles right beneath Dan’s eye.

“Thank you,” Dan says.

It hits him, just the amount of gratitude he feels towards Phil in this moment. He really reached out to another person and got exactly what he needed. 

Phil doesn’t always feel like a person, though. He feels like a crystal, in the shape of a human, protecting everyone around him with the power of his very presence.

“Kiss me?” Dan asks, voice trembling.

Phil only needs to tilt his head up to close the small distance between their mouths.

It is so different from everything Dan had with Jimmy. He hates to keep comparing them, but he can’t stop. It isn’t a fair comparison, anyway. Dan gave nothing to Jimmy, while he is somehow giving everything to Phil. He never gave Jimmy the chance to comfort him like this.

Phil pulls away first. His eyes are full of something Dan can’t name as they flick across his face with their usual urgency.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Phil asks.

Dan shakes his head. Phil nods in response.

“Sorry,” Dan says then, as he remembers himself. “You’re supposed to be working with PJ, aren’t you?”

“He went home,” Phil says. “We were about finished, anyway.”

It cuts like daggers in Dan’s gut.

“Hey, no,” Phil says, grabbing one of Dan’s hands. “I told you you don’t get to do that, didn’t I?”

“What do you mean?” Dan asks.

“You were making yourself out to be the bad guy again,” Phil says. “Right?”

He says it so softly, Dan wants to cry. He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing. He looks down on their joined hands and shrugs.

“Does your dad make you feel like the bad guy a lot?” Phil asks.

There is such a hesitancy in the way he says it that Dan almost feels bad. That feeling is nothing in comparison to what is coming now, though. Susanne has told him this very thing, so many times, but Dan never properly felt it. Not like he is right now.

Dan has no words, but he looks up at Phil’s face, and that seems to be enough. Phil’s assured expression wavers. Dan doesn’t think he has ever seen Phil look so sad.

“Oh, _Dan_.”

Phil envelops him and before Dan even realises he is crying, Phil’s shirt is wet against his cheek as Phil holds him to his chest. 

Phil wraps himself around Dan like amethyst armour. The shadows can’t hurt him now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Aftermath by Muse  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	45. Chapter 45

Dan feels exhausted and rejuvenated at the same time.

Getting to know Phil is proving to be a lot about Dan getting to know himself, too. He is learning who he is, next to a person that understands him on such a deep level. He is learning what it is like to understand another person in the same way. They may not know everything about each other, but that isn’t the same thing. Dan knows Phil and Phil knows Dan, and they still have so many things to learn about one another. Dan can only find excitement within that prospect.

With Jimmy, the meaning of knowing someone was confusing. It was completely different. Dan hadn’t known enough about what knowing someone in this way meant to go beyond a surface level. Like how Dan knew what Jimmy liked in bed, but didn’t know his parents’ names. Looking back now, it almost seems silly. He was in love with Jimmy. Some part of him is still in love with Jimmy, and feels regretful over how things went down. But they didn’t have more than that.

They didn’t understand each other. Dan had been unable to open up because Jimmy didn’t know how to ask the question. They used distractors upon distractors, putting off the realisation that what they were trying to do simply couldn’t work.

Jimmy is a peridot. He is the yellow-green crystal that looked like something Dan might have needed. A sense of order, in the way everything they did together felt like the two of them trying to follow a set route of unspoken steps together, when in reality, they could hardly even walk in the same vague direction.

It is in this same way that Dan had thought he needed the schedule to keep himself in check. But the schedule became a way for him to be violent towards himself. In the way that he always felt a need to follow the guidelines of two emotionally charged parental figures and always failing because guidelines that are only based on emotion can’t make sense, Dan held himself accountable for even the smallest misstep. His mind repeated the same words that he had heard from his parents for his whole life, and he didn’t even realise that he was doing it.

A peridot is good for certain things. In Fall Whisperer, it is used as a tool for guidance, as long as you fuse it with the quartz. It helps you find your way among the crystals in the cave, leading you towards the ones you are searching for.

Perhaps Jimmy was the one leading Dan to Phil, all along.

Dan eyes open to the view of the slope of Phil’s bare back in the soft morning glow from the window. He woke up early, despite staying up late playing video games with Phil. The duvet has been pulled down to the small of Phil’s back. It stops by his knees, revealing long slim legs. 

It is exciting to look at Phil like this. They are touching new places and getting braver each time they are intimate, but there isn’t any time to look and admire. There are still so many nerves involved when they get there, excited ones rather than insecure, but they still hold the same result. They rush forward when they find something that works, and rarely slow down. That is nice, too, Dan thinks. He has had more sex in the last few days than he ever had in such a short amount of time before.

But right now, Phil is beautiful in the soft morning glow. The city isn’t silent but at least it isn’t loud. Dan feels oddly serene. This is so far out of his comfort zone; in a strange bed with a person he hasn’t known for long, whom he has already shared so much of himself with, emotionally as well as physically. It doesn’t feel like that, though. It feels like this, being in bed with Phil and sharing himself with him in every way imaginable, is his actual comfort zone. Everything else in his life is what is outside of it. Being alone at his flat certainly wasn’t a comfort zone, even if Dan used to call it that. It was the only zone he knew, though, and so he’d had to make due. 

Dan has spent so much of his life trying to make something out of a life that gave him nothing.

Phil makes him feel like he can have more than ‘something’. Like he deserves more than ‘something’.

Dan grabs the duvet and pulls it up over the both of them. They are only in their underwear, able to be skin to skin if the want to. 

Waking is so far away, still.

The way Phil relaxes as his shoulders are covered in the warmth of the duvet makes Dan’s heart weep. He shifts forward, hitching his leg over Phil’s bum and wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Phil makes a small, content noise as he sleepily settles his head to fit under Dan’s chin. Dan tightens his grip momentarily, just to release some of the tension that the overwhelming sweetness of this moment somehow creates within him. 

It makes Phil stir. Dan relaxes and rubs a soothing hand over Phil’s side.

“Mmh,” Phil whispers.

Dan feels a kiss right beneath his clavicle. Then the mouth travels lower, until it finds his nipple. There is a wet lick and suction that makes Dan groan, yet again tightening his hold of the man in his arms.

“It’s early,” Dan whispers.

Phil can definitely feel how hard Dan is against his hip, so he doesn’t fault him for giving out a sleepy laugh in response.

“Can I make you come before you go back to sleep?” Phil asks.

He looks up at Dan’s face. They smile at each other. It feels like every other time they have smiled at each other in this knowing way but even more. They don’t have to hide behind any kind of politeness after everything they’ve shared at this point.

“Do you have to?” Dan asks, putting on an annoyed, exaggerated voice.

Phil snakes an arm over Dan’s waist and pushes his hand under his boxers, grabbing a handful of ass.

Dan groans.

“That’s not playing fair,” he fake-complains.

“I wasn’t trying to,” Phil grins.

Phil kisses down Dan’s stomach and pulls his boxers down to reveal Dan’s half hard, flushed pink cock. They don’t take time to really look, usually, but Phil pauses briefly. His curious gaze burns but the fire goes out when he looks up at Dan with a goofy, shy smile.

He looks adorable.

“What?” Dan asks through a laugh.

Phil takes Dan’s cock in his hand and pushes it to his lips. He sucks the side of it. Dan’s thighs begin to tremble as the mix of Phil’s sleepy gaze and the feeling of his lips against him goes into overwhelm.

This time in the morning feels like something different, like an exception, where slowness and lingering gazes are suddenly allowed.

Phil smiles against the shaft.

“You’re so hot,” he says. “It drives me crazy.”

He licks a wet stripe along the side of Dan’s cock. Dan’s breathing is a bit choked, rushed and then slowed down, as his lungs try to keep up with the way his muscles contract and release upon every touch, every kiss.

Dan reaches out and brushes his hand over Phil’s cheek.

A feeling awakens in his chest and he is powerless to stop his heart from opening up and revealing everything he has tried to put bounds on. Phil seems to notice a change, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he goes lower, taking one of Dan’s balls in his mouth, while he moves his fist up and down Dan’s cock in a slow rhythm.

Dan touches Phil’s hair. Phil’s other hand lies on Dan’s stomach, and Dan grabs it. His head is spinning with the weight of the realisation. It might not even be a realisation. Dan realised long before this moment, but it is fully hitting him now.

He loves Phil.

He loves Phil in a way that is so entirely different from the way he has ever loved anyone before. This love is deeper, so much deeper, but Dan doesn’t feel lost travelling among its depths. Phil is holding his hand and kissing him all over, grounding him into the feeling.

Dan comes all over Phil’s hand only a minute later, thrusting into his fist and his kisses.

Phil doesn’t need to be asked before he straddles Dan’s lap, hands supporting himself on either side of Dan’s shoulders, and leans down to kiss him. Dan opens his mouth for his tongue. He searches blindly between Phil’s legs until he finds what he was looking for. He grabs his cock inside his underwear and pulls at the foreskin, squeezing and releasing as Phil begins to fuck into his grip.

Phil’s noises are high and airy against Dan’s mouth. There is a hint of desperation in his voice that sends Dan reeling. He holds on to Phil’s thigh to ground himself. Phil is positively falling apart above him, in the best way, and Dan feels capable of putting him back together.

“I’m gonna,” Phil moans, voice tight.

“Gonna what?” Dan teases. “Use your words.”

Phil looks into his eyes. 

“I’m gonna come,” he says.

Dan feels it in his fucking toes.

He starts jerking him off quicker, causing Phil to shut his eyes and bend down, placing kisses all over Dan’s neck until he stops and simply rests his mouth against the skin as he fucks Dan’s hand harder.

This must be what it means to make love.

Phil’s body tenses hard and he goes completely still. One, two, three hard thrusts later he is coming, groaning and moaning in this completely unfiltered way that Dan hasn’t heard from him before.

“I’m sleepy,” is the first thing Phil says after a bit of time of holding each other and breathing together.

Dan laughs, but when he speaks his voice is choked like he is about to cry.

“Me too.”

Phil pulls himself up to look at Dan.

“Do you know how much I love your eyes?” Dan asks.

Phil smiles. Dan wants to tell him more things he loves about him. He wants to use that word in every sentence they exchange. Love, love, love.

“No,” Phil says.

“A lot,” Dan says. “I love them a lot. They were the first thing I really noticed about you.”

Phil hums. He lies down next to Dan and Dan rolls over until they are facing each other, on seperate pillows but sharing a duvet.

“Do you know the first thing I noticed about you?” Phil asks.

Dan shakes his head. He is so caught up with everything Phil that he almost forgot himself, that he is a person in front of Phil and not just an entity, simply meant to soak him up.

“Your hands,” Phil says.

He brings them up between them and runs a thumb over Dan’s knuckles. He kisses the back of it with an almost strange intensity.

“Beautiful hands,” Phil breathes.

They end up falling asleep tangled in each other, wrapped in warmth and mutual admiration.

-

Breakfast would have been lovely, if it weren’t for the fact that Chris was around.

Dan thought he could sense glances, time and time again, measuring the distance between him and Phil where they were sat by the breakfast bar having cereal and coffee. He isn’t sure whether they are hiding this from the others, or whether they are simply letting things play out. He isn’t sure whether they are going to establish this as something or not.

The breakfast bar had been full of giggles and the attempt to not be obvious, which in turn is about as obvious as two people can be. The fact remains that Dan spent the night in Phil’s bedroom without saying hello to Chris until the morning after.

Chris isn’t an ominous presence. He chatted with them for a bit before having his breakfast in front of the telly. It doesn’t take much, though. Wherever there is trouble to find, Dan finds it. He can’t just enjoy something. He wants to be prepared when the _something_ that always hits eventually hits instead of falling from a height he never imagined reaching.

For now, Phil has his arms around him in the hallway. For now, Dan is threading his fingers through Phil’s hair.

“I have to work,” Phil whispers.

Dan is well on his way to leave. He has his shoes and coat on, but then, he put those on well over five minutes ago.

It’s so fucking hard to leave.

“I don’t want to leave,” Dan admits.

Phil looks him right in the eyes with a comforting assuredness.

“I’d have let you stay, but PJ and Angie wanted to work here today,” he says. “And you deserve better than being cooped up in my room all day.”

Dan disregards the sentiment as his mind catches on the unfamiliar name.

“Angie?”

“Just another person that’s working on the project,” Phil shrugs.

He steps out of Dan’s embrace with a loopy smile.

“Oh,” Dan says.

The assuredness wavers, revealing a hint of worry in the yellow of Phil’s eyes.

“Are you okay to leave?”

The thing is, that Dan has no idea if he is. All he knows is that Phil has work and he has his medication at home, so they have to be apart for a bit of time anyway.

“Yeah,” Dan nods. “I’ll be fine.”

Phil doesn’t have to say anything. There is something between them that tells Dan that Phil can tell he is unsure, because somehow Phil always knows. 

Eventually, the silence breaks as Phil laughs.

“Just go,” he whines. “I swear I’ll never get anything done again by the way we’re going.”

Dan opens the front door and squeezes Phil’s hand.

“You got me done, though,” he whispers.

The eyebrow wiggle to follow is excessive. The joke is awful enough as it is. Regardless, Phil laughs.

“Awful,” he says with a shake of the head. “Absolutely awful, Dan.”

-

The moment Dan walks outside the apartment building, his world tilts to the side.

There is a bit of time where he feels unsure whether Jimmy is actually walking towards him, or if he is imagining it as he imagined that the _something_ would arrive as soon as he left Phil’s building. But Jimmy is real, as is evident in the charming smile he so easily puts on despite the discomfort that is everything but hidden in the brightness of the cool morning sun.

“Dan!” he says. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Dan side steps from where he had been frozen to the spot right outside the front door to make room for Jimmy.

“Yeah,” he grins. “Gotta make sure they aren’t alone for a second, right?”

It must be obvious. He must be painfully obvious. Dan feels his pulse in his temples.

Jimmy smiles back, grabbing the door handle, until he seems to think better of it. His hand falls to his side and he keeps his stare at Dan’s probably beet red face with something like contemplation worrying his brow.

“Dan.”

The veil of politeness and ‘everything is fine’ drops the moment his name is uttered. There is nothing new behind it. Dan already knew what he would find there. He has seen it so many times before.

Conflicting feelings of guilt and desire, rioting inside Dan’s chest. As always, the guilt wins out. Jimmy shines like the yellowy green of the peridot.

“Can we talk?” Jimmy asks.

Dan makes sure that his jaw doesn’t drop. Then again, how hard he is keeping it clenched might be enough tell.

“What? Now?” Dan says.

He can’t hide the slight exasperation slipping through in his voice. Jimmy almost looks sorry. This is the role Dan puts on when he is with Jimmy. The asshole. The unreasonable one. Dan despises that person.

“Yeah,” he hesitates. “Unless you have somewhere you’ve got to be?”

Dan has somewhere to be. In his flat, taking his meds, waiting out the hours until he returns to Phil.

For a second, the idea of returning here doesn’t look purple. It is overshadowed by the confusing shade of the peridot. 

“No, I-,” Dan lets out a breath. “It’s fine, yeah.”

He takes a step forward, expecting Jimmy to open the door for him, but Jimmy stands in place. Jimmy’s shoulder brushes against Dan’s chest and Dan feels a tremble inside. 

Everything went by so quickly, once it was truly over between them. They went from seeing each other almost every day, trying their hardest to figure the other out, to dead silence. They couldn’t spend time alone anymore.

Dan knows why. He wonders if Jimmy does, too.

“I thought we could stay out here,” he says.

Dan might still be putting on a fake, chipper tone, but Jimmy isn’t. Jimmy looks tired.

“Okay,” Dan says.

He takes a step back.

“Follow me,” Jimmy says as he finally moves, walking back in the direction of his own flat. “I know a place.”

Dan holds his breath, but he dives into the unknown, despite the clear expectation to end up breaking his bones against the pavement.

He never knew himself to make good decisions, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song of the chapter: Time In A Bottle by Jim Croce  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	46. Chapter 46

The place Jimmy knows is not his flat.

It is a bench beside a lake, at the green area on the other side of Jimmy’s apartment building. It looks nice. The water may be reflecting grey clouds, and the scenery may be obstructed by bin bags lining the streets next to the buildings on the other side of the water, but still, Dan can see why Jimmy likes it.

The trees are crowned by red leaves. Only a few yellow ones remain, but orange is starting to creep in from the edges. 

“Pretty,” Dan comments.

His mouth is too dry for his voice to convey his intended sarcasm. Jimmy shoots him a look as he sits down. There are depths of sadness in his bright green eyes. Dan doesn’t feel like being sarcastic anymore.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy shrugs. “Pretty isn’t the word I’d use.”

Dan sits down beside him.

“What word would you use?” he asks.

He forces himself to take on a gentler tone of voice. It isn’t hard to do when Jimmy fiddles with his hoodie strings and taps his foot. All of the nerves suddenly making themselves known through his movements enable Dan to feel calm. When he sees it so clearly in Jimmy, he can almost gather an outside point of view on this.

They are just two guys that tried so hard to match each other’s paces. Things didn’t work right after Jimmy and Lucy broke up, so why would they have worked out now, really?

“Don’t talk like that,” Jimmy says, pleads.

Dan shuts his mouth. Jimmy twists his.

“Or do,” he says, followed by a dry chuckle. “Fuck, I don’t know.”

“You’re the one that wanted to talk,” Dan presses.

“Yeah, and it’s bloody awkward, isn’t it?” 

“Jimmy.”

That takes Jimmy aback. His urgency slows and after two seconds of torturous eye contact he looks away. 

Dan is the chaotic one. Dan is the asshole. Dan is the one that ruined everything. Dan is the one that shouldn’t have let his past get in the way of the present.

Right now, it doesn’t feel quite that black and white.

“I’m sorry,” Dan says. “I really am.”

Jimmy keeps his eyes steady on the water. Dan takes a breath.

“I wasn’t good,” he elaborates. “You were trying so hard and I was a fucking wall.”

Jimmy seems to catch on that. He doesn’t look back at Dan but he listens harder. Dan can tell from the way his hands have gone still on his lap.

“You deserve someone better than that,” Dan says. “I hope you _have_ someone better than that.”

“No,” Jimmy says.

Dan frowns. Jimmy looks at him with a pleading expression.

“It wasn’t like that. God, did I make you believe that?”

Dan’s perception of everything that happened between them wavers. Then it comes back steady.

“Make me believe what?” he asks. “I never gave you a chance. All I did was make _you_ believe that I didn’t feel the same way about you. I even fooled myself into believing that.”

Jimmy takes Dan’s hand. Everything around them disappears, and all that exists is that simple touch.

“Dan, slow down,” he says. “Okay? I just want to…”

It is so odd for the two of them to talk so openly with one another. Every conversation they had before was such bullshit, when really, they could have just talked.

“Listen,” Jimmy says, starting over. “I knew you were into me. I knew it since I broke up with Lucy. I was in a whole fucking crisis over finally not being in denial and I put all of it onto the closest person that was susceptible to it.”

Jimmy takes a breath.

“That was you,” he clarifies. “You were just…”

He squeezes Dan’s hand. There is a pain in him that Dan has seen before, but only in brief moments. Now the pain stays and if the tortured look on Jimmy’s face is anything to go by it isn’t an easy thing to talk about.

Dan stays silent.

“... there,” Jimmy says. “I had everything working against me and I didn’t know if I was ever going to come out and stop living a lie. I never knew if I would stop feeling all of this guilt and shame over something I couldn’t change about myself, and then when I decided to stop feeling that, I had all of this guilt over my relationship with Lucy.”

Red leaves blow in the wind and fall onto the surface of the water.

“There was only one thing that made me not feel like a horrible, disgusting person during that time of my life.”

Jimmy’s eyes lock onto Dan’s.

“You,” he says. “Again. Always.”

Dan opens his mouth to speak and closes it when no words come out.

“I hate that that surprises you,” Jimmy says, some emotion in his voice. “Just goes to show how I treated you, yeah?”

“You always told me you liked me,” Dan disagrees.

“No,” Jimmy shakes his head. “That wasn’t real, was it? We didn’t talk for real.”

It is strange how Jimmy can feel so different yet so familiar. As if Dan somehow knew this, but it was all clouded by his own self hatred.

“You were always calm,” Jimmy continues. “You made me feel like there wasn’t anything wrong with me. I felt like a good person when I was around you. Whenever I felt like my life was falling apart, I knew I could just throw you a look across the room when everyone was hanging out and you’d always look back. You always knew, even when no one else did. You actually looked long enough to see that I was hurting.”

Dan doesn’t know whether to feel proud or whether to disagree. It is true, Dan did know. He did see. He knew that Jimmy was suffering because he recognised it. And Jimmy was always seeking him in those moments. Dan only wanted Jimmy to feel accepted by someone, but he never thought he succeeded. In his own mind, Dan comes up short in everything he tries to do.

Here Jimmy is, telling him that Dan did everything he wanted to accomplish.

“It was mutual, though,” Dan says. “I felt uncomfortable when everyone was hanging out sometimes, but you made me feel like I wasn’t alone in that.”

Dan threads his fingers between Jimmy’s. They do share something. Even if it isn’t what Dan has with Phil, it is still _something_. He never knew what that something would be, when it came close and threatened to make him vulnerable in their intimate moments, but now he thinks he is close to finding out.

“And then when we got together again,” Jimmy says, “I fucked it all up. I put everything in your corner when you weren’t able to call the shots.”

“You didn’t put everything--”

“No, I did,” Jimmy interrupts. “I really did, Dan. Think about it.”

Dan lets out an awkward chuckle. This isn’t going at all like he was expecting it to. He can’t recall a conversation like this where he wasn’t allowed to apologise, but rather, was apologised to.

It feels weird.

“You showed up at my door every night,” Dan jokes. “Didn’t seem like much of a choice to me.”

“Thanks, call me out for being desperate,” Jimmy quips.

They share a laugh that lifts some of the weight between them.

“I wanted to see you,” Jimmy says. “But when it came to actually putting a name to that, I never told you what I wanted, did I? I told you I was fine with whatever you wanted. Which we both know I wasn’t”

A conversation appears in Dan’s memory, of the time when Jimmy asked him if they were casual. Jimmy did say that he was fine with whatever Dan wanted. Phil said almost exactly the same thing. Right now, Dan’s view of everything suddenly seems so wrong. He had no idea.

“You have this way about you,” Jimmy says, and his voice goes quieter. “Like you know how to make everything right. I don’t think you realise how comforting that is for someone like me.”

Dan can’t help the twisted grin that comes out at that.

“I’m always a mess,” he says.

Part of him wants to rewind and explain to Jimmy just how broken of a person he is. Dan knows which part of him that is. The spectator looms over him and asks him not to accept Jimmy’s point of view. It goes against everything Dan believed to be true.

“You’re not,” Jimmy says. “You were the one that finally ended things when we were going nowhere. I didn’t have the guts to do that. If I have feelings for someone I keep them close even if we end up hurting each other, but you didn’t. You had feelings for me and you did what was best for both of us.”

Dan looks down at their hands.

“Shouldn’t I fight more for it, though?” he asks. “When things get hard I give up.”

It aches to think about. All he sees in his head is Mum, and the progress she has made, and the way that Dan turned his back to her because it was hard.

“I don’t think you’ve given up yet,” Jimmy says.

Dan looks up.

“This thing with Phil. That’s been hard, right?”

There is a part of Dan that wants to pretend like he doesn’t know what Jimmy is talking about. Like he shares nothing with Phil worth talking about.

Another part of him desperately wants to talk about Phil. That part is stronger.

“No,” he says. “I’ve… It’s been easy. It’s been so easy.”

He feels himself smile stupidly. Jimmy squeezes his hand until Dan looks back up in his eyes.

“But is it really easier?” he asks. “Or is it just more worth the hard parts because it’s right?”

Jimmy is following a line of thought that Dan didn’t know they were on.

“Is that how you feel about Chris?”

Jimmy smiles. There is a vulnerability in his eyes, one that tells Dan that whatever they have is incredibly important to him.

“Yeah,” Jimmy says.

They go silent. Dan looks at the red leaves floating on the grey water below them and thinks about conversations he has had in the past week. Phil, Rob and Jimmy have all said similar things. That Dan is someone they feel sees them when no one else does. He can feel some big part of himself resist the idea that that could be true. The idea that Dan actually has something to offer to the world, to other people.

The peridot isn’t much different from the emerald. Not only are their colours similar, but they offer some of the same qualities. Where the peridot offers structure, the emerald offers calm. Maybe they both work well with the amethyst.

Dan is suddenly reminded of something Jimmy told him, months ago, when they were in bed. About who he reached out to after coming out, the university friend he had fooled around with back in the day.

“Jimmy,” Dan says, and untangles their fingers. “Is Phil the one that you…”

Dan’s heart picks up, and the previously approaching feeling of serenity fades. He doesn’t even know how to say it out loud. Picturing Phil with another person makes him feel like he is about to fall down a dark spiral.

“Yeah,” Jimmy says. “We used to fool around, a little bit.”

Dan looks at him, but he can’t see. All he can imagine is the two of them, together.

“Well, twice,” Jimmy says with a small laugh, seemingly oblivious to the rise of Dan’s panic. “And I cried after, both times.”

Dan can’t imagine Jimmy being in that much denial. But imagining that takes away some of the sudden fear in having it confirmed. Despite being closeted when they met, Dan always felt like Jimmy was sure of himself, in some inate way. Maybe that perception of him isn’t totally accurate.

“I’m sorry,” Dan says.

“It was a long time ago,” Jimmy says. “I’m glad that it happened with Phil, though. Phil is a great fucking guy. He never pushed me. He comforted me.”

Dan isn’t surprised, but his heart swells at the idea anyway. Of course Phil would do that.

Dan doesn’t realise he is smiling until Jimmy smiles back.

“Kind of wish I hadn’t done it with him, though,” he says. “It made Chris think I wasn’t into him.”

“Oh?” Dan says, raising an intrigued eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Jimmy says. “We’ve had a lot of stuff leading us up to what’s been happening recently.”

“What has been happening recently?”

Jimmy taps one foot and grins, shaking his head at himself.

“A bunch of stuff,” he shrugs. “After our thing stopped it started to happen really fast. Like, it was crazy.”

Dan listens.

“It’s been ten years, but it felt like when we first met,” Jimmy says. “We just work. And he never forgot. He never stopped trying, really. He’s always been there. But I guess, when things ended between you and me, something finally clicked in my brain. Like, what the fuck am I doing, you know?”

The genuine joy in Jimmy’s light tone is wonderful to hear after how sad he has sounded for most of this conversation.

Chris is loyal. Jimmy might need someone like that. Someone that will stick around and wait until the right moment. Dan is reminded of the iridescent shade of the opal.

“I’m happy for you,” Dan says.

He takes Jimmy’s hand again, and squeezes it, hoping that that expresses how much he means it.

“Yeah,” Jimmy says. “I’m happy for you and Phil. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like he is when he’s with you.”

Dan tries not to smile as hard as he wants to.

“What do you mean?” Dan asks.

“He’s just… different,” Jimmy says. “Like, more himself? More comfortable? I don’t know, but I don’t think I’ve seen him like this since before…”

He stops himself. Dan’s heart aches.

“Since before his dad got ill,” he fills in.

Jimmy nods. It feels a bit wrong, talking about that when Phil isn’t around.

“I guess it changed him,” Jimmy says. “Not like he was that weird or anything, he just seemed more scared.”

“Yeah,” Dan says.

To him, Phil has always seemed in control. Never scared. Comfortable in himself, and always looking out for other people. But then, Dan can’t know what Phil is like when he isn’t around.

“Maybe he didn’t change, though,” Jimmy says, sounding far away in his thoughts. “He might’ve just needed someone to make him feel less scared.”

Dan feels his cheeks heat up.

“I don’t think he’s scared when he’s with you,” Jimmy says.

Dan’s heart doesn’t feel like it is made of glass right now. It feels much safer than that. It feels like all of those broken shards are being replaced by a more reliable material; by peridot and opal and, most of all, the amethyst.

“We’re good,” Dan says, “yeah?”

He doesn’t want to linger in Jimmy’s assumptions on Dan’s effect on Phil. It makes him feel too good.

“I never faulted you for anything that happened between us,” Dan goes on. “Never. I never would. I know I’m a lot to deal with.”

The pain returns to Jimmy’s eyes.

“No,” he says. “You aren’t, Dan. I don’t understand why you keep saying that.”

Dan knows why. Dan knows why and he hates it. They aren’t his words, not really, and yet they are the only ones that come out of his mouth.

“Yeah,” Dan says. “Sorry.”

“But yeah,” Jimmy says. “I want us to be friends again. Not weird or anything.”

Dan grins.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay.”

They sit in the moment.

In the middle of all the red leaves, two green ones fall to the surface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Call It Fate Call It Karma by The Strokes  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	47. Chapter 47

The Halloween update has been patched in.

Dye is wearing a bear outfit, and White is wearing a cat outfit. Last year, they were a zombie and a vampire. Apparently, the theme for this year isn’t quite as spooky. It is nice, though, to see the lights spreading across the forest, and the pumpkins that have been placed in various areas. They all glow in different colours, as the light emanating from their insides come from different crystals rather than from candles.

The forum is filled with screenshots of the gorgeous scenery, and Morgan sends an early sketch of the art she is working on to the group chat. It is a drawing of Dye and White, dressed up in their costumes, looking soft and cute in that way that Morgan so easily accomplishes. Dan sends her a bunch of praise in response.

The forum has calmed down, finally. Sam and Mason haven’t posted anything new in a while, but they have sent a link to the group chat for Jamie, Morgan and Dan to read the new chapters before they are posted. Sam and Mason are riding out the storm, as they put it, and letting people enjoy the update before their return inevitably causes some stir.

Dan wishes it didn’t have to be like that. He wishes that Sam could post his fluffy halloween oneshot without fear. He wishes that Mason could post his slightly cursed but amazing smut as a counterpoint. Dan hasn’t been reading as much, but his online friends are still important to him. Fall Whisperer is still important to him.

They are all on the server, exploring the update. It is always interesting to find new things in the game. The holiday related patches always have _something_. It is slightly different, though, now that Dye and White’s relationship has been confirmed. It isn’t quite the same, as previously the most focus Dan put on any clue was its relation to the characters.

He doesn’t exactly miss that focus. He feels more at ease, knowing that everything that comes now is just a bonus. He wasn’t frustrated by the lack of confirmation before, rather, he felt seen because he prefers to not label himself, or make a big announcement. He told Susanne that he is gay, but he doesn’t know if that’s true. He knows what he likes, but he can’t tell which label suits him. Their next session is tomorrow, and he doesn’t exactly look forward to elaborating on it. He isn’t exactly sure what to talk about. His impulse to keep anything sexual or romantic to himself during their sessions doesn’t exactly work, given how the past week has been going for him. Everything with Phil, and the conversation with Jimmy. They are both still occupying his mind.

Fall Whisperer is a welcome distraction. As much as Dan loves to think about Phil, it makes him miss him too much when he knows they can’t hang out again for real until the weekend.

Before Dan shuts down his computer for now and makes his way to work, he opens his private conversation with Seagull.

He can’t tell where they stand right now. For a while, Dan felt like he was important to the team. Seagull told him he was part of his plan, but was that only for that duration? Or do they want to contact him again?

Regardless, their conversation is right there. Dan has every opportunity to use it. If not to have a proper conversation, then to at least tell him directly that he appreciates what he is doing.

 **achromatic_bot** : this update is a lot of fun! my group in the server have been playing for hours checking it out also dye and white are cute as a cat and bear :)

He doesn’t feel as adamant on keeping up a cool facade, now. Seagull can think what he wants. From their limited interactions, Dan can tell that Seagull doesn’t act like there is as big of a gap between them as Dan thinks that there is.

Dan receives a response right as he puts on his jacket and opens the front door.

 **Seagull** : Thanks Chrome! <3 (It’s good to hear from you!)

His heart skips a beat, and his fingers start to tingle, as he stares down at his phone. There is something about Seagull responding, still. It feels entirely surreal.

 **achromatic_bot** : it’s good to hear from you too :) <3

On the tube, with the Fall Whisperer playlist playing in his headphones, he gets the next response.

 **Seagull** : Did the things that prevented you from participating in the stream work out?

‘The thing’ is Dan’s family asking him to come celebrate his little brother. No big deal, really. And nothing has changed between him and them since. He still avoids them. He still feels his stomach drop when he thinks about how Dad has been adamant on coming to visit on Monday.

He really can’t have that. He can’t say no, but he can’t handle them coming to his flat right now. He just wants to keep his life feeling okay for a bit. Things haven’t been working out this well for him for a long time and he wants to enjoy it for as long as he can.

 **achromatic_bot** : idk really, but i am feeling slightly better about them. i just wish i could have been around still :/

 **Seagull** : So do I, but hey, let’s focus on the important stuff! Things are better! Right?

Dan walks up the stairs of the Underground, headed for the clinic. 

**achromatic_bot** : they are. things are a lot better actually, thank you <3

_Thank you for having created something that became the reason why my life hasn’t completely fallen apart._

**Seagull** : Anytime! :D <3

Dan arrives at work, gets in his scrubs, and puts his phone away.

-

Last Thursday feels like a lifetime ago. At the time, meeting Phil still felt like a rare privilege as they had just started to meet up without the rest of the guys. 

Despite this, Phil walking in seems a strange sight more so than it did then. Dan pretends to busy himself with the computer as Phil approaches the receptionist window and Dan presses the button.

Phil looks absolutely too irresistible with his messy quiff and glasses. His contrasts are even more startling right now as he unzips his coat, revealing a black Zelda t-shirt. His skin looks if possible even paler than it does normally, and in turn his neck looks even longer and that much more inviting to kiss. 

The moment the window opens Dan is hit by honey and citrus and all of Phil. As much as he would like to make a joke and pretend like they are strangers and that the past week didn’t happen just to hear Phil’s laugh, he can’t tear his eyes off him for long enough for it to seem believable for even a second.

“Philip Lester,” Phil says with a dorky smile.

Doing everything in his power not to smile back still leaves Dan giving a toothy grin back.

“Yes,” he says as he checks him off on the computer. “Eric will be right with you.”

The world goes still as they look into each other’s eyes and the smiles fade. Phil glances down at Dan’s lips and breathes in deep. Dan watches Phil’s chest rise and fall as the breath leaves him and thinks back to how Phil looks, free from all these clothes, in bed hovering above him and panting hard as Dan kisses his chest and strokes his dick.

Looking into his bright blue eyes, Dan is immediately convinced that Phil is thinking about the very same thing.

“Do you want to come to mine tomorrow?” Phil asks.

“Yes,” Dan says.

Phil chuckles and Dan blushes, feeling the eagerness settle as he thinks about what tomorrow actually is without Phil in mind.

“I don’t get off work until twelve am, though,” he says with a groan.

“I’m a night owl, it works out,” Phil smiles.

“Yeah,” Dan says, tapping his fingers against the desk.

Phil looks down at his hand for a moment and Dan remembers what he said about it the other night. His stomach swoops as he turns his hand over, deliberately flexing his fingers to bring more attention to it.

“I miss you,” Phil says.

It hasn’t been more than a day since they saw each other last. Dan feels it, though. He feels it so much it hurts.

“Me too,” Dan says.

A cough lets them know that there is someone standing behind Phil, waiting to be checked in. Phil jumps and his cheeks flood with red as he steps aside. He covers his mouth in his attempt not to laugh as he watches Dan sweat and try his hardest to switch from the person he is with Phil to the person he is at work.

Phil gets called in before Dan is done with the patient. They don’t get to look at each other, or be weird at each other, or try to make each other laugh before he is out of sight.

-

When Dan gets off work that night, he has two new messages. One is from Phil, and the other one is from Seagull.

Phil’s message contains the raincloud, the lightning bolt, and the black heart. In response, Dan sends an emoji of a purple night sky and a purple heart. It probably means more to him than it does to Phil, but it doesn’t matter. If there is any type of weather that reminds Dan of Phil, it is the quiet of the middle of the night, when the sky is fully black once you first take a look up, but the longer you look, the more stars appear.

Seagull’s message is different.

 **Seagull** : Btw I was wondering if you would like to playtest Caves and Gardens at some point? We were thinking of sending a demo out to a couple of different test groups before it’s released. I can’t say when we’d do it, but it wouldn’t be for a while. I’d love to hear what you think of it, though, if you want to :)

Dan’s heart beats harder, in a different way than it did when he read Phil’s message.

 **achromatic_bot** : YES

He laughs quietly into his hand at himself where he is sat on the tube.

 **achromatic_bot** : i mean yeah sure it’s whatever ….

He pockets his phone and lets all of the good feelings from today run through him like waves.

-

Dan nearly oversleeps.

He gets dressed in a hurry, his body running on adrenaline alone without his usual cup of coffee. His schedule might have been bad for him in some ways, but at least he always woke up at the same time. He can’t only blame this on himself, though. Upon arriving home last night, Phil rang and they ended up talking on the phone for over two hours.

Dan told him about his conversation with Jimmy. It felt strange to share. Dan’s relationships are all divided into sections in his mind and he rarely allows them to overlap.

It felt good to talk about it, though. Phil was gentle in his responses and generous in praise, stressing the fact that he thinks Dan should feel proud of himself for finally talking things out with Jimmy. Dan had pushed against that notion at first. He didn’t feel like he could take any credit for the fact that they had talked, as Jimmy was the one who initiated it. If he hadn’t, Dan probably wouldn’t have ever brought it up.

Dan thinks about it on the way to therapy. He thinks about Phil’s warm laugh in his ear when Dan had tried to convince him that he had nothing to feel proud of.

“Are you forgetting who you’re talking to, Dan?” Phil had asked, voice full of affection.

“What?” Dan had responded. “I’m telling you, I-”

“No,” Phil interrupted. “I know what you think.”

_You’re really good at convincing people that you’re a bad person, aren’t you?_

Dan still doesn’t know how to respond to Phil’s unwavering conviction that Dan is good. That was what his conversation with Jimmy had been about, too, after all. The fact that Dan hadn’t been the one to ruin what could have potentially happened between them, but that it was a case of both and neither being at fault.

It still won’t settle in as a truth in Dan’s head, but he is trying. He tried last night.

“I mean, I won’t lie,” Dan said eventually. “I don’t feel proud of myself for it, even if I know it was… good.”

It was difficult, just to say that.

“I wish I was with you right now,” Phil said. “I think it’s easier to convince you when I’m there.”

Dan laughed.

“What are you saying?” he asked. “Getting dicked down is the answer to everything?”

On the other end, Phil went weirdly silent.

“Phil?” Dan beckoned him.

“I hate you,” Phil wheezed in response, and a string of almost silent giggles followed.

“I should’ve remembered your scrubs kink,” Dan said.

“I don’t have a -”

“You do.”

Phil released a groan that was probably meant to sound exasperated, but instead it ended up filled with affection.

“It’s more like I have a _you_ kink,” Phil admitted. “I’d probably be into anything with you.”

“Anything?” Dan challenged.

“Okay, now I’m scared,” Phil laughed. “But, yeah, probably.”

Alone in bed, Dan got hard just thinking about being in the same room with Phil; the idea of _anything_ was almost too much.

“Am I boring if all I want to do right now is suck your dick?” Dan asked.

The breath Phil released in response was enough. The following hour, the conversation consisted of lewd suggestions and hushed voices, as they touched themselves at the other’s command and instruction. One of the last things Dan heard before he fell asleep was the now familiar groan from deep in Phil’s chest once he came.

Dan can’t wait for tonight. Some of their relationship is still floaty and undefined, but he is aggressively certain of one thing; he wants to be around Phil as much as he is allowed to, regardless of definitions. He is almost as certain of the fact that Phil wants that too.

Despite the amount of good floating around inside as Dan walks into Susanne’s office, there is still room for discomfort. Susanne’s smiles are gentle and encouraging as Dan tries to talk about the past week without mentioning Phil or Jimmy.

He will talk to her about them at some point, but not now. Right now, Dan is still processing. He is still deciding on how to talk to Susanne about his sexuality, so the idea of suddenly sharing the intimate details of two of his relationships is all too daunting a task.

The past week hasn’t been all good, though. That is not something Dan can ever come to expect. So Dan tells her about his talk with Dad, and the way he reached out to Rob after, and how he still can’t tell some of his friends about his relationship with them even if he wants to. Phil isn’t a friend, he never was, but it doesn’t feel wrong calling him that anyway. He doesn’t know anyone that has been a better friend to him than Phil has, even if they are more than that.

“So he is demanding to come visit?” Susanne asks.

Dan nods.

“It’s not like he shouldn’t,” he says, “I have no right to tell him not to come by when he still pays for it. I just hate it when he doesn’t even pretend to give me a choice.”

Dan thinks back to before the stream, when Dan said no and Dad got Mum to convince him instead.

“Or,” Dan sighs. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s worse when he pretends I have a choice. I just hate being in this situation.”

Susanne always manages to look compassionate without leaning into pity. She worries the pen in her hand in contemplation.

“I think you definitely have a right to tell him not to come by,” she says.

“Trust me, I don’t,” Dan says with a laugh.

“I think he has a right to want to see you,” Susanne elaborates. “But he can’t just say the time and date and expect you to act accordingly. You have a life and time that you have to manage. The fact that he doesn’t even give you control over that is pretty telling.”

“I don’t have a proper job,” Dan says with a shrug. “He knows I don’t have work on Mondays.”

“It’s not like you can demand to come over to theirs on the weekends, though, right?” Susanne asks. “The fact that you don’t work on Mondays and Tuesdays is not something you just decided to do. There is a reason for why you can’t work full time. You deserve to be in control of your own time.”

It is hard to hear even if it makes sense. Dan thinks this, too, but sometimes he doesn’t have the energy to feel upset about it. It still drains his energy to go along with what Dad does, because being treated like less than a person is incredibly draining. Things get harder when he talks back, though. It is one of the main triggers for Dad’s abuse. The guilt and blame that gets thrown Dan’s way as soon as he tries to assert his position and self worth makes it not feel worth it.

Susanne hums to herself when Dan doesn’t respond.

“You don’t have to talk to him about it now,” she says. “It’s hard. But I want you to know that you don’t deserve to be treated that way.”

Dan takes a deep breath.

“I just hate thinking about it,” he says.

Dan is either going to cry or dissociate and he doesn’t know which one is worse, right now.

“It’s unfair,” Susanne says. “I know.”

“It makes me feel powerless to think of what he’s actually doing, you know?” Dan says.

“Is that why you won’t talk about it with your friends?”

It cuts like a knife in his chest. Dan nods, feeling his throat go tight.

“Probably,” he says.

“The way he treats you doesn’t say anything about you, Dan,” Susanne says. “It says everything about him. It won’t make anyone think less of you if you tell them about it.”

Dan needs coffee. He feels absolutely too emotional right now.

“Do you want to talk about something else?” Susanne asks.

Dan thinks about purple and Phil and the fact that he will see him tonight. He will be in Phil’s arms and he won’t feel as small as he does right now. He won’t feel like the product of years of emotional abuse.

“It’s fine,” Dan sighs.

“You’re strong, Dan,” Susanne says. “I hope you know that. You’re really strong.”

“I don’t feel strong,” Dan says. “I don’t want to be fucking strong.”

Susanne looks apprehensive but she doesn’t react more than that. She has learned that Dan isn’t angry at her when he talks like that. Rather, he is angry about his entire life. He is angry because as much as he wants to not be defined by everything that has happened, he always will be, in some way.

It doesn’t make him feel good, to be called strong, not when it comes to this. Dan doesn’t want this to be part of his life. He doesn’t want to have developed an emotional armour that keeps the people he loves at a distance. Phil is close, but Dan’s silence around this is another barrier to get past. He wishes that that barrier didn’t exist.

“Why is that?” Susanne asks.

“You don’t become strong until you’re victimised, right?” Dan says. “Until you’re put in all of these situations and treated in these ways. I would rather not be strong because of it than to have gone through it.”

There is a weight of hopelessness on Dan’s shoulders as he leans back in his chair and tries to regulate his breathing.

“I’m not asking you to be grateful for the way he treats you,” Susanne says. “I just want you to know that you are more than he makes you out to be. It doesn’t matter who knows, Dan. His faults are his, and no one is going to think otherwise. Rob didn’t, and your other friends won’t either.”

Rob knows what families like that are like, though. There is no learning curve to get through. Dan doesn’t have to justify himself because Rob has been there himself. The idea of justifying himself over this to Phil is horrifying.

They talk for ten more minutes, a time in which Dan struggles to focus and Susanne plans out their next session. They won’t see each other for two weeks this time.

Before Dan leaves the building, he goes to the bathroom right by the exit. He looks into his own empty eyes in the reflection of the smudged bathroom mirror and tries to force himself into his own body. Looking in the mirror makes it seem that much more prevalent, though, the fact that he is currently not present. His reflection isn’t a stranger but it doesn’t exactly look real right now.

Dan knows how to make himself feel real.

He picks up his phone and rings Phil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: You Don't Care About Us by Placebo  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)


	48. Chapter 48

There is no response.

Dan listens to the beeps until a prerecorded message from Phil plays.

“You’ve reached Phil Lester. I can’t take your call at the moment, but feel free to leave a message and I’ll be with you as soon as possible.”

Dan ends the call and looks back at his reflection in the mirror. The sound of Phil’s voice, even if it was an uncharacteristically impersonal recording, has brought Dan back a little bit.

He feels no desire or motivation to go to work right now. He has been seeing Susanne on and off for over a year now, and it never gets easier to talk about his issues. What he hates most is that he knows why that is.

Dan keeps his life separated into different sections. He is careful not to cause an overlap. He is one person at work, with a set of mannerisms that he deems suitable for when he is there. He is a different person around Haley and Lucy, another on the forums, a third with the guys. Even therapy is divided into one separate section. Susanne can’t help him if she doesn’t have a clear view of who he is in all parts of his life, and yet, Dan manages to slip into a role that abides by the rules of what his own preconceived notions about what a guy his age going to therapy should be.

Phil is the one person that has managed to bridge some of these gaps.

He has seen Dan at work. He has seen Dan with friends. He has seen Dan in bed, on the edge of a breakdown. He has seen Dan laugh until his stomach hurts.

When Jimmy made his way into these different parts of Dan’s life, it filled him with unease. It made him feel like there was someone checking on him, figuring him out, realising what a mess of a person he is. Never consistent, always trying his hardest to fit in the situation he is put into because he never feels like he is actually a part of anything. The spectator pulls him to the sidelines, forced to view the situation as if through a screen, while trying his hardest to pretend to be a person that isn’t spending most of his life on this separate plane of existence. Everything he tries to do is affected by this. Nothing is entirely autonomous.

Having a person that close to him felt uncomfortable because he was waiting for the shoe to drop. He was waiting until Jimmy realised what a phony he is, presenting himself as organised and upbeat when in reality, he drowns in chaos for the better part of the week.

Dan had thought that Jimmy saw all of that, eventually, but he didn’t. Jimmy only saw a guy that helped him feel calm. He didn’t think of that calm as fake even after he saw Dan cry and panic in front of him.

There is no discomfort in Phil seeing all of these sides of him anymore. Phil pulls him into the present. He makes things feel real, and not like some made up reality that Dan can only watch unfold without the power to control it himself. It doesn’t stop Dan from feeling like he is playing a role a lot of the times, with no actual personality to cling to. The person that he is is rather a shell with a thousand different masks.

Dan’s internal view of himself has not changed. But next to Phil, none of it seems relevant.

Dan doesn’t obsess. Not anymore. He learned the hard way, how and why he should stop himself from relying on another person in this way.

Still, on the tube on his way to work, he’s got his heart in his throat and shaking hands, willing Phil to pick up the phone when he calls for the tenth time. Still, he manages to convince himself that the only reason he is going to work despite this state of mind is because afterwards he gets to see Phil. Still, he loses part of himself to the idea that Phil will put him back together.

Dan detaches. He doesn’t know how to attach - not because he can’t - but because he doesn’t do it correctly. He attaches by clinging to the other person, claws extended and piercing through the kindness and openness of his unsuspecting victim. He clings and he clings and he clings.

It always ends a while after it has gotten to this point. The resentment to follow sticks around long past its welcome and it hurts, even years later.

He doesn’t obsess like that anymore. He already decided that a long time ago.

But the time that passes at work only seems to pass when Dan fills his head with Phil. The present only seems present when Dan imagines purple and honey and citrus and night sky.

It is almost humorous, how one can be so well and truly fucked and still remain powerless to stop it from happening.

-

When Dan gets his phone during his break, he has three missed calls from Phil and two text messages.

**Phil** : Are you okay?

**Phil** : I guess you’re at work now. Please respond when you can <3

Dan’s ‘at work’ mask slides off his face for a moment as he struggles through the mixed emotions of feeling cared for and feeling guilty for instilling this worry in Phil.

**Dan** : therapy was hard but i’m okay. i’m sorry. it wasn’t exactly a 10 calls in a row situation.

He puts his phone away and takes a breath. He hates this.

Work is going to keep going for a few hours and Dan is going to spend that time dreading seeing Phil now. Because Phil is going to have questions. To Phil, this is uncharacteristic of Dan to do. Dan had decided that this isn’t him - that’s how it was supposed to work. Pushing something away doesn’t mean getting past it, though. Dan was able to ignore that impulse before because he didn’t really have anyone to feel that impulse with anymore.

Dan feels like he has taken a thousand steps back on a one thousand five hundred step journey.

-

When Dan walks outside after finishing his shift, he expects the all enveloping instability of Friday night London to swallow him whole. He expects to feel on edge all the way to Phil’s, because he has been feeling on edge for the past three hours. He expects to want to hide inside his big coat and disappear from the world.

His expectations are correct for about two minutes, until a hand on his arm startles him out of any thinking or any feeling and pushes him all the way to his most basic instincts.

Sadly, Dan’s instinct isn’t fight and it isn’t flight. Dan’s instinct is to freeze, completely, until he turns around and sees Phil’s face.

There is a wide smile on Phil’s face that Dan is powerless to not meet with his own toothy grin. The work day washes away as he steps into his arms in the hidden corner of London that is the alley leading up to the back entrance of the mental health clinic. Phil holds him tightly, tighter than he ever dared to do in public before.

“You didn’t have to come meet me,” is the first thing Dan as he looks at Phil’s face.

“I wanted to,” Phil says.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Dan says.

“I’m not. I know you can handle yourself.”

The pit Dan has been trying not to fall into gets larger and larger and it isn’t long before the edge he is teetering on is going to disappear, making him unable to stop himself from falling back down.

Phil has so much faith in him. Rather than letting that be one of the pillars to Dan’s recovery, Dan is turning it into his only pillar. He doesn’t want to turn all those safe and happy feelings into something bad. He wants so desperately to keep something in his life pure.

That is the thing, though. Dan expects himself to try to be perfect because in his mind, Phil is perfect. It is when he stops allowing himself setbacks and mistakes that things start to spiral. 

But Phil thinks that Dan can handle himself.

He couldn’t be more wrong.

“Phil,” Dan exhales.

All of these internal rivalries may not be visible on the outside, but they are unavoidable on the inside. Phil must realise that ten missed calls aren’t something to just brush off. He is choosing to disregard it for now for Dan’s sake, because that is the type of person he is. He lets people go at their own pace about these things.

Well, he lets Dan go at his own pace. Or maybe he is creating a pace that Dan is simply following along to.

When Phil’s lips meet his, the thoughts go away and Dan holds on tighter. It has been way too long since they last kissed. There has been a day and there has been a night and Dan never wants that much time to pass before they are together again. He doesn’t want to think about what that means. He only wants to pretend like he won’t have to be away from Phil at all anymore and that that will all work out fine, somehow.

He wants to tell Phil he loves him. But he isn’t sure that would work out fine. Which is something he is concerned with, now. The thing that drew him to Phil in the first place, the safe space in which he could express himself without judgement, is a place he is scared to go to now in fear that it will take it away. Which doesn’t make sense at all, really. Dan doesn’t make much sense, though, because somehow, getting close with another person always makes Dan push them away, in one way or another.

They make their way to Phil’s flat mostly in silence. There are touches and meaningful glances being exchanged, but any words they want to say are too revealing to be said on the tube or on the streets. 

Dan listens to Phil talk about a strange telemarketer that called him yesterday and attempts to let himself feel close to Phil while simultaneously pushing the ‘himself’ part of things out of the equation. He only wants things to feel like Phil. Not like himself. Not like a strong force, ruining everything in its path with no mercy. He only wants to feel the warmth of the purple that shines from Phil and everything that he is.

-

The flat is eerily quiet when they arrive. There is no PJ working on a laptop or tablet on the sofa and there are no sounds of Chris or Jimmy coming from Chris’s bedroom.

There is simply a quiet nothingness that Dan interprets as serene and free. Because the moment they have got their shoes and coats off, Phil takes Dan’s face in his hands and pushes their lips together. Dan doesn’t have time to ask where everyone is. He forgets that it is a relevant question at all when Phil gets on top of him on the sofa and they keep kissing, mouths opening for each other in the darkness. They forgot to turn on the light in their haste but Dan doesn’t care. He grabs Phil’s ass and pushes his hips up, and Phil nuzzles into his neck and breathes.

Dan attempts to slide his hands down Phil’s jeans when Phil speaks up.

“Dan,” he says.

Dan pauses.

“Yeah?”

Phil sits up, straddling Dan. His hair is messy and his glasses are askew. The front of his white t-shirt has been pushed down, revealing part of his clavicle. Dan finds himself getting stuck staring at it. He wants to hear what kind of noises Phil would make if he kissed it.

“Are you alright?”

Dan blinks, and looks up at Phil’s face. The darkness is creating stark shadows on Phil’s facial features, making his expression look grim. There is none of that to find in the tone of his voice, though. Dan is looking for harshness where there is none to be found.

“I’m alright,” Dan says, without so much as considering the question.

Phil leans back down and kisses him. Dan lets out a breath.

“I want to have sex with you,” Phil whispers.

Dan feels it everywhere, as if the words touched him physically.

“I’m not stopping you from doing that,” Dan chuckles awkwardly.

“What happened in therapy, Dan?”

Dan makes a face and forces another laugh.

“Wow, man,” he says. “Way to kill the mood.”

Phil smooths a thumb over Dan’s cheek. His urgent eyes flicker over different parts of Dan’s face and for a moment, Dan wonders what he sees. What do all of these quick little glances mean? There is nothing to find in Dan’s face. His eyes are empty and his thoughts are dead. He is half a person trying his best to look like he doesn’t keep losing more and more of himself the more time goes on.

Phil can probably tell that Dan isn’t whole.

“It doesn’t kill the mood for me,” Phil whispers.

His voice is so gentle but the words may just break Dan all the same.

“And I thought the scrubs kink was weird,” Dan says.

“Shut up,” Phil says with a grin. “You know what I meant.”

He meant that there is room for Dan’s feelings even now, while they are kissing and rubbing together, making up for the time they have spent apart. He meant that despite wanting to communicate in the way they haven’t been able to while not physically together, Dan doesn’t have to do any of that if he isn’t feeling up to it.

“Yeah,” Dan says. “It’s fine. I was just feeling really weird after and talking to you makes me feel not weird.”

Phil looks into his eyes. The almost smug smile in his bright blue eyes is going to make Dan fall deeper. Deeper, deeper in love and further, further into the deranged behaviour that he hates. It is so good and so bad because Phil is only good and Dan can’t ever have something that is only that.

“So I called ten times,” Dan says to the smugness as it turns into naked affection. “Because I’m insane like that.”

Phil kisses him. Dan breathes in through his nose and lets his hands wander underneath Phil’s t-shirt and up the naked skin of his back. Phil’s back arches. Dan can feel the goosebumps under his fingertips. As their mouths part, Dan releases a horny, warm breath that Phil must feel because the affection has turned hotter now.

“You’re not insane,” Phil says.

Dan tickles up and down Phil’s back and watches Phil’s eyes shut tight as he struggles to breathe with the sensation. Dan smooths his hands out to lay flat on the small of Phil’s back and Phil’s eyes open back up. 

“You said I was a storm,” Dan says as he remembers the game that they played only a week ago. “That’s not something you’d say to describe a peaceful person.”

Phil’s chin lies flat on Dan’s chest as he looks into Dan’s eyes. His hand moves from the side of Dan’s face and into his hair. He plays with the ends of the curls, wrapping them around his fingers and releasing them. He looks to be deep in thought.

“We really don’t have the same interpretation of what a storm is,” he says eventually.

“What’s a storm, then?” Dan asks. “To you?”

Phil looks into Dan’s eyes and a new emotion is unlocked. It is a quiver in Phil’s top lip, a flutter of his eyelashes. Dan doesn’t know what this feeling is but it feels deeply personal.

“Excitement,” Phil says quietly. “That moment when things finally _happen_ after a while of nothing ever fucking happening.”

Phil massages Dan’s scalp and Dan’s eyes shut briefly. Phil’s voice is so soft and his touches are so nice. It has been a long, long day with therapy and work. Dan might fall asleep, subjected to the softness of this moment.

“It’s like, when things finally break,” Phil says. “But not like it all falls apart. It’s when things finally change and you realise why things have been going the way they were. When you can finally move on.”

Phil’s expression is so sincere as he speaks. Dan wonders if that is what Phil has been doing since they met and, according to Jimmy, stopped being scared. 

Maybe Phil is finally moving on from the things that haunt him.

“So what I mean is that you excite me,” Phil says. “But it’s calm. It’s always calm with you.”

Dan sees green as the emerald appears in his mind’s eye.

“I’ve never felt calm during a storm,” Dan says with a wry smile.

“We must have seen different storms, then.”

Dan’s heart cracks enough for the sentiment to make its way inside of it. Phil always makes him feel like a real person. He makes him feel like he could be more than the villain that the spectator paints him as.

“Kiss me,” Dan says, because he can’t stand not kissing Phil for another second.

Phil leans forward and kisses him. It is over too quickly, Dan feels as if their lips barely touched. He is both hard and sleepy and in this moment he can’t decide on which desire is more important.

“I think of you as a night sky,” Dan says. “No clouds, with a lot of visible stars. And purple.”

Phil doesn’t really laugh but there is a hum of amusement.

“Purple?” he asks.

Dan is too tired to make sense.

“It’s just a dumb thing,” he murmurs as his eyes shut. “From that game? I don’t know.”

“Fall Whisperer?” Phil asks.

Dan’s eyes open. Phil remembered.

“Yeah,” he says. “Remember that whole crystal bit?”

Whatever was unlocked in Phil’s eyes before goes back into hiding. For the first time since they got back home, Phil looks away from Dan’s face.

“I remember,” he says.

“I know it’s lame,” Dan offers, feeling himself blush.

Phil looks back at him and his usual certainty takes over whatever troubled him before.

“It’s not lame,” he says. “I want to hear more.”

Dan lets out a little laugh.

“Okay,” he says. “What do you want to know?”

Phil smiles as he watches his own fingers play with Dan’s hair.

“What it means to you,” he says. “That game. It sounds like you think about it a lot.”

Dan’s heart starts beating harder. He doesn’t know how to put that into words, but he still wants to tell him. He might have tried to push Phil away before but right now, no part of him wants to do that. He should take the opportunity to bring Phil in closer when he has the chance, when he still feels like he is able to.

It is hard to talk about things that are personal. It is hard to describe the harsh truths of life just as they are. 

Dan is an emotional abuse victim. Dan has an alcoholic parent in recovery. Dan was suicidal for years. Dan had no one to turn to. No one was there for him, when it mattered the most.

He didn’t have any true solace. He didn’t know how to process his emotions rather than repressing them. Not until he found Fall Whisperer.

Truths sound less confronting when told through the lens of a pixelated 2D computer game, where there is a Shadow Realm and protective plants and quirky characters and enticing crystals. Maybe this is the tool with which Dan can actually talk about himself with someone else, finally. Maybe it could be easier to be open if he told his truths with the same references in mind as he does when they feel easiest for Dan to accept about himself.

With all of this in mind, Dan takes a breath, and readies himself to start from the beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Approaching Storm by Mia Strass  
> [ **[fic playlist]**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)
> 
> This week, Fi @psychicmoth on twitter and tumblr shared [**two absolutely gorgeous pieces of art**](https://twitter.com/psychicmoth/status/1200478421798785024), inspired by Monochrome. I am so thankful for her and her never ending support. You should all go check out her art and support her!! <3


	49. Chapter 49

Despite never having truly talked about it before, Dan has thought about this long and hard enough to know what to say.

“I guess it helped me understand myself and what I was going through. It made me feel less alone”

Phil strokes his cheek. There are miles and miles of compassion in his eyes. Dan isn’t scared to walk in that direction. He throws the steering wheel to the side for now.

He stalls right as he is about to enter into Phil’s sympathy. He could be vague, and stay on the sidelines of the connection that he fears will get too intense and break as a consequence. That is not what Dan wants to do anymore. He has stayed afraid and careful for so long, when in reality, all the good things that have happened lately is because he found the courage not only to exist but to live and take the opportunities around him.

So he decides to take the plunge. Phil makes it so easy to do that, every time.

“My parents weren’t the best when I was growing up,” Dan says.

It feels wrong to say that, still. He is unhelpfully reminded of every manipulative remark Mum or Dad made whenever he told them they had done something wrong. 

Dan had a roof over his head, there was food on the table, they even went on trips abroad together as a family. Because of this they have made him feel like he has always been asking for too much, and even now at twenty seven on the other side of all of this progress, telling a new person about it makes him want to smooth everything over. Like his parents invalidated his feelings all through growing up, Dan has the impulse to invalidate them right now, too.

But he is not with his parents right now. He is not a child.

He is with the one person in the world that truly makes him feel safe. He is being touched with all of this comfort and compassion.

Regardless, it is still hard. Dan forces himself not to judge himself for still struggling.

“They’re the kind of people that are never wrong, according to themselves,” he says and makes a face in an attempt to take some of the weight off the conversation. “Anything that went wrong was somehow my fault. I was always the scapegoat, even as a child.”

Phil doesn’t say anything. Dan doesn’t know if he wants him to or not.

“So I only ever learned to discredit myself,” Dan says. “I didn’t believe my own thoughts or feelings because the most important people in my life, the people that I trusted the most, never thought of them as real. Every opinion or feeling I had was treated like an attack against them.”

Phil sits up on Dan’s lap. Dan follows, and lets Phil take his hands in his. 

Phil is still quiet, but the look on his face is loud. He is angry that Dan has gone through this. He must be realising that he was right all along. There was someone that made Dan believe that he was a bad person. It became so deeply ingrained in him that it took years for him to even begin to question whether that was true or not.

“Then I became depressed,” Dan says, “after moving out to university. But that’s not really why I dropped out. I dropped out because as soon as I moved to Manchester, my mum started drinking really heavily and it made for some pretty disastrous situations. I couldn’t focus on school while I was depressed but my parents were guilting me into moving back home, too.”

Dan feels the guilt, even now. He pushes through it. He is too sick of lying about the truth to really want to twist it right now, anyway.

“I rented a flat in Wokingham for a while, but that didn’t work out either. I spent all my mental effort on trying to take care of Mum and the dog and acting as a therapist for my dad who was, obviously, having a hard time with everything that was happening. I wasn’t able to keep a job because I was constantly on edge, waiting for the next bad situation. I was completely exhausted.”

Dan feels it, deeply. Phil must notice because squeezes Dan’s hands and raises his eyebrows minutely, a soundless ‘are you okay?’. Dan manages a tight smile in response, a tiny nod.

Now that he has started talking, it is difficult to stop. He has so many words for something that he has tried his hardest not to think about, he surprises himself. 

Phil’s gentle hands make it feel easier, too.

“I moved back in with them to help take care of my mum and they made me think that that meant they were the ones that were helping me because I was having issues with my mental health. But they were the fucking reason that those issues got as bad as they did to begin with. So I ended up living with them for a few years, putting everything I had hoped to achieve away in favour of helping two people that would never show gratitude for the fact that I was giving up my entire life to help them.”

The fire is still there. For all the guilt Dan feels, he is angry at the same time. There is a voice inside of him, completely different from the spectator, that is kicking and screaming. It wants justice for all the things that Mum and Dad did, even if he never will. No matter what, Dan will never get those years of his life back, and that is something he will have to live with. In a way, that makes the anger feel comforting, because it means that in spite of everything Dan is not just accepting that he was treated this way. Some part of him always knew that it was wrong, even if he had to suppress it.

“In the middle of all of it I found Fall Whisperer.”

Phil looks right into Dan’s eyes. Dan is far along into Phil’s compassion now, and he doesn’t ever want to leave.

“I immediately interpreted the story to be about mental health. The shadows felt like a representation of the people that were bringing me down. The cave seemed like a metaphor for personal insight, while the garden was the opposite - simply ignoring the issues. Dye and White, you know, the main characters? A lot of the story is about their different ways of dealing with these shadows and part of the story culminates in them finding compassion for one another, and realising that they need each other in order to truly move forward rather than working against each other.”

Phil looks down at their hands. Dan takes the silence as an opportunity to keep going.

“It’s that and just,” he sighs, “a bunch of other stuff. It’s a really complex story when you really think about it. It shows all these nuances and ways of looking at things. That perspective was something I needed in my life. It was the only thing that made me feel like I wasn’t wrong.”

Dan smooths his thumbs over the backs of Phil’s hands.

“But it didn’t stop there,” he says quietly, regretfully. “When my mum got better and I finally moved away, far away, it didn’t stop like I had thought it would. Instead, I had this weird reaction where I felt completely clueless about who I was or what I was supposed to do with my life now that my purpose was no longer to take care of them. I’m honestly still figuring it out. I still get these spells where I feel like everything is on fire and there is nothing I can do to help anyone, but when I first moved here I felt it all the time. I was genuinely going crazy.”

Phil makes a soft noise of disagreement.

“I think that’s when the game really started to make even more sense to me,” Dan says in response to the noise. “Because really, what I feel it truly is about is how to move on after something like that has happened to you. I don’t know.”

Dan is tired. He could fall asleep any second. At the same time, talking about all of this again is making his heart beat hard. Every time he talks about his family, he goes into that mindset, where they are everything that exists and his own existence is meant to only serve them. He gets pulled into it. He would probably fall all the way down if he was alone and didn’t have support around him.

But right now, he has support. Phil is listening and he is not asking Dan to be grateful for the fact that his parents didn’t do anything worse. Dan feels protected by his very presence. Not from them, they are not actually threatening him right now more so than their strange demands from time to time, but from the thoughts and ideas that they instilled in him. Phil feels like an antidote to that conditioning.

“I get what you mean,” is the first thing that Phil says in response. His voice is quiet but as he looks up at Dan’s face, his eyes are loud. “I felt the same way after my dad was finally out of risk. I thought that the worst part was over and that I could finally get my own life in order after having that breakdown, but then the guilt started. I looked at everything from my mum’s or brother’s perspective and it made me look like a horrible person. Luckily they didn’t think that way at all, and they made sure to tell me that, but it became the truth in my head all the same.”

“You’re an amazing person,” Dan says with emotion. “It’s not like you asked to have a meltdown. That only happens after you’ve truly been through some shit.”

“Yeah,” Phil says. “I get that now. It was terrible, though. It really fucked me up. I thought I was beyond repair for a while.”

Dan wants to cry.

“I had things to help me, too, though,” Phil says and his tone goes gentler, he even manages a small smile. “Kinda similar to how you’re talking about the game. PJ was there for me.”

Phil does a weird pause, then, as if he is thinking of mentioning something or someone else but choosing not to.

“Anyone else?” Dan asks, tentative.

Phil shrugs. He looks morose.

“I guess my boyfriend at the time was there for me, too,” Phil says. “He wasn’t always great, but he never made me feel guilty for feeling the way I did.”

Dan feels the sharpness of jealousy prickle inside of him and swallows it down. His mind gets stuck on ‘wasn’t always great’. He wants to know what it means.

Instead, he chooses to move on from it. He will ask another time.

“I’m glad,” Dan says, blinking away the tears that are forming in his eyes.

“Hey,” Phil says, “it’s okay.”

Dan shakes his head. “I know. It’s just hard to talk about.”

Phil kisses him and Dan breathes into it, holding Phil’s sides and opening his mouth for him. Phil seems to always be able to sense what he needs. The kisses may not lead to anything but there is compassion in them. It feels like Dan is being retroactively comforted, like the version of him that was scared and lost and alone after moving to London is finally being put back together into something real and solid. 

Maybe that version of him deserves to be comforted. Maybe that version of him could be more than just a bad memory.

As they part, tears roll down Dan’s cheeks. As he looks back at Phil, he notices that his eyes are red and shiny, as if he has been crying as well.

There is an openness to him right now that Dan wants to dive into. There are no walls. Phil looks terrified and sad and determined at the same time. It feels like they are on the brink of some new territory which Phil controls and Dan only has to go along with. Phil’s hands are shaking and so Dan takes them in his own, squeezing them gently to stop the worst of the tremors.

“Are you okay?” Dan asks when the shaking doesn’t stop.

“I don’t know,” Phil says.

His breaths are becoming shallow.

“Phil,” Dan says, louder now, in an attempt to pull Phil away from wherever he is going mentally.

“I think I’m having a panic attack.”

He says it so calmly. Dan is almost impressed with the fact that he is even able to speak.

“Okay,” Dan says.

He makes sure to really look at Phil’s face as it looks right now, to memorise these tiny, tiny details that indicate something like this happening with him. It is hard to distinguish them, really, because Phil looks calm. There is a slight fear behind his eyes, though, one that Dan would never be able to miss.

“Can I touch you?” Dan asks.

Phil exhales a tight breath and nods.

Dan puts a hand on Phil’s chest and takes a deep breath through his nose. He stares at Phil with intent until he takes a deep breath of his own. He releases when Dan does. The hands start to shake again when all the air has been let out of his lungs, as if he is going on empty with nothing to fill out his insides.

“You’re going to be okay,” Dan says, and hopes that he isn’t making it worse. “This isn’t dangerous. It will pass.”

Phil pulls his hands out of Dan’s grip and buries his face in his palms. His shoulders shake and Dan hears wet, choked breaths escape him.

“I’m here for you,” Dan says. It feels important that Phil knows that. “Whatever you need.”

Even as he is subjected to all of this, Dan feels completely calm. He is alert, and attentive to Phil’s emotional state, but he doesn’t feel scared. Even in this state, Phil doesn’t make Dan feel unsafe because he is still Phil.

When Phil doesn’t respond or ask for anything, Dan makes the decision for him. He gets off the sofa and takes Phil’s hand, leading him to the bedroom. Once there, he undresses himself and helps Phil with his zipper when his hands shake too hard manage his own. 

They are down to their underwear when Dan gets them in bed and holds Phil in his arms. He makes sure to take exaggerated, deep breaths that Phil mimics. Dan’s arms are wrapped around his waist and they are pushed chest to chest, so tightly that it almost hurts, but Phil seems to respond to that tight hold. The shaking isn’t as bad when Dan holds on to him. 

He imagines Phil as a purple feather, trying and trying to fly away into the harsh winds, but Dan is stronger than those winds. He can manage to hold Phil down while they attempt to grab him until they tire of trying.

It is two o’clock in the morning and Phil’s blinds are closed. They are surrounded by honey and citrus, but there are other scents to take into account as well. Dan thinks he can smell lavender, like the faint remnant of a blown out scented candle. There is a smell of soil, too. Maybe Phil was taking care of his potted plants earlier today. The idea of that makes Dan’s heart almost hurt, as he physically feels the way his affection for Phil grows deeper.

Eventually, Phil stops shaking completely. He pulls away from where his forehead had been sweating against the side of Dan’s neck and looks at Dan’s face. His eyes are so tired.

“Keep telling me things,” Phil says. “I don’t want to think.”

“Are you sure?” Dan asks, because he thinks Phil can handle questions now. “If this happened because of something I said--”

“No,” Phil says, shaking his head. “It’s been a long day. I’m stressing out about our project and I know I shouldn’t take too much on but I’ve been kind of getting to that point again recently.”

Dan eyes him with concern.

“Phil,” he says.

“I didn’t think it was too much,” Phil says. “I felt on top of the world when I started to plan it all out, and-- I guess I felt a bit invincible when…”

He pauses again. He does that a lot, come to think of it.

“When…?” Dan prompts.

This is more than Phil has ever said about work, and though there are more serious concerns at hand here Dan can’t help but feel curious.

“When I met you,” Phil finishes with a small laugh. “You make me feel so strong. Stronger than I’ve ever felt.”

Dan bites his lip as a wave of emotions wells up inside of him.

“I guess I still have to be careful,” Phil says.

“Yeah,” Dan says, stroking the back of Phil’s head. “You have to take care of yourself, baby.”

The pet name slips out before Dan thinks about it. He feels embarrassed, but the glimmer in Phil’s eye makes it worth it.

Phil leans into Dan’s touch and closes his eyes.

“Talk about something,” he reminds him.

Dan thinks for a moment. His life isn’t that exciting. He doesn’t know what he could talk about.

But then, Phil knows about what Fall Whisperer means to him now. That barrier that Dan has with other people that wouldn’t understand his connection to the game is no longer present between them. Phil hasn’t said much about it, but he seems to get it.

“My friend Morgan is working on some really good fanart for Fall Whisperer,” Dan says. “Oh, I’m kind of… involved in the fandom, by the way.”

Phil’s eyes open back up.

“I have a server with a few friends I’ve met online,” Dan says. “Through the forum for the game. We play together a lot. I’m a nerd, I know.”

Phil laughs.

“Really?” he teases, and for a second he looks away into the distance as if a million thoughts are flickering through his brain. “I would’ve never been able to tell.”

“Shut up,” Dan grins.

“That’s no way to speak to your baby,” Phil shoots back.

Dan’s cheeks go red in an instant but then Phil pushes their lips together with such feeling that he goes red for a different reason entirely.

“I like it,” Phil whispers when he pulls away just enough for their foreheads to still be touching.

“Okay,” Dan says, blushing harder.

“Call me that again,” Phil prompts, and Dan doesn’t have to open his eyes to know that he is smiling like an idiot.

“Fuck off,” Dan laughs.

“Come on,” Phil says.

“Baby,” Dan whispers, and opens his eyes.

“It’s pretty hot,” Phil comments, meeting Dan’s eye with a grin.

Dan gives him a suspicious look.

“Do you still want to fuck?” he asks.

Phil’s amusement fades and is replaced by a look that Dan now recognises as arousal.

Still, Phil seems to consider it. He looks at Dan’s lips and back up into his eyes, and as he does, he sheds the humour and arousal. He sighs, and pushes at Dan’s chest until Dan is lying flat on his back and Phil goes on top.

“Yeah,” he says, lips brushing over Dan’s clavicle. “I want to fuck.”

Dan takes a heavy breath.

“Okay,” he says.

Phil pulls the duvet on top of them and starts to move with Dan. Dan closes his eyes and lets today wash away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Crystals by Of Monsters And Men  
> (thank you tumblr anon for letting me know about this song <3)
> 
> Yesterday, Mile @yeetingmysoul on twitter posted [**this stunning artwork**](https://twitter.com/yeetingmysoul/status/1201324707934605312), inspired by Monochrome. It is so beautiful and I'm so thankful for her continuous support on this fic :') Make sure to go support her!!


	50. Chapter 50

Dan awakes to an empty bed.

Before opening his eyes, he searches blindly through the covers. At first he thinks that Phil’s bed is larger than he remembered. Once he rubs his eyes and cracks them open, the sight of the empty spot next to him makes his stomach sink.

He sits up, rummages through the bag he brought and grabs his medication. He pulls on a pair of green pyjama trousers and a white t-shirt that he finds in Phil’s open closet. The shirt is tight over the shoulders, but Dan figures that he doesn’t need to cover up seeing as the flat is empty apart from him and Phil.

Once he steps outside the bedroom, he discovers that they are in fact not alone.

He isn’t sure if there is even a ‘they’ to speak of, right now. There isn’t a single trace of Phil. The only person here apart from Dan is PJ, who is sitting with his laptop on his usual spot on the sofa, feet propped up on the arm rest. His hair is in its usual state of mess. PJ adjusts the round glasses that were falling down his nose as he turns to look at Dan.

Dan finds himself at a loss. Suddenly he can feel the way that the material of the t-shirt clings to his stomach, and all he wants to do is hide.

“Good morning,” PJ says with a raise of an eyebrow.

“Morning,” Dan says. “Uh, hi.”

He is frozen to the spot. Him and PJ have never spent any time alone together, and though they get along just fine in a group, Dan has no idea what to say to him. This is Phil’s closest friend. Dan wants to make an effort, but he can’t.

PJ gestures towards the red mug on the coffee table next to him and smiles.

“There’s coffee if you’d like some,” he says.

“Alright,” Dan says. “Thank you. I think I’ll just---”

He steps away, towards the hallway and the bathroom. PJ doesn’t say anything. Maybe the way to get on PJ’s good side is to let him call the shots.

After Dan has taken his meds and emptied his bladder, he hurries back to Phil’s bedroom. PJ, thankfully, doesn’t make a second attempt at conversation.

When he checks phone, Dan discovers an unread message from Phil.

**Phil** : Stay in bed.

Dan frowns in confusion, but he gets back under the covers.

**Dan** : ???

Phil’s response comes quickly.

**Phil** : >3

After everything that has happened already, and all the affection Dan already has towards Phil, he had assumed that it must be impossible to feel more. But then a message containing only two characters manages to push him an extra step and the _more_ envelops him fully.

**Dan** : yesss

**Dan** : i miss you though hurry <33

**Phil** : Almost there! :) <3

Dan stares at the message for a moment before he puts his phone away, wraps himself up in the covers, and closes his eyes. He hopes he will be able to fall back asleep so that he can do the morning over by waking up to Phil.

-

Dan doesn’t wake up to Phil’s presence, but to the sound of him entering the flat and talking to PJ. He keeps his eyes closed and tries not to listen to their conversation.

“So he _did_ spend the night?”

It is PJ. He doesn’t sound happy.

Then again, PJ can be quite blunt. He might sound more upset than he actually is. Despite knowing that, Dan can’t help but think that PJ seems to disapprove.

“Yeah. I got us breakfast.”

This is not a tone that Dan has heard from Phil before. He sounds unsure. Dan is reminded of Jimmy describing Phil as ‘scared’.

Dan might be letting his fears take over now, but an unhelpful part of himself thinks that Phil definitely sounds apologetic. It hurts to think that. It feeds the monster inside of him, the one that is so sure that Dan’s presence in other people’s lives is nothing but a burden.

“Phil.”

PJ is putting on a warning tone. Dan feels sick to his stomach.

“I know, I know.”

If he felt sick before, it is nothing compared to how Dan feels hearing the genuine remorse in Phil’s voice. He _does_ feel guilty for spending time with Dan. Even the most deluded person would realise that. Phil’s tone of voice is telling enough.

Dan pushes the covers over his head in an attempt to block any more hurtful words out. He knows not to indulge this part of himself. It is difficult to find a balance, though. There is a fine line between blocking things out just enough to feel okay and blatant repression. Dan has absolutely not found where to exist on that scale yet.

For now, he forces himself to stop listening in the hopes that he is simply thinking too hard about it all. Dan has a history of looking for issues where there are none to be found. He could just as well be doing that right now.

It doesn’t take long before Phil enters the bedroom. The scent of coffee and chocolate makes Dan’s mouth water.

He stays hidden. He listens as Phil puts the food down on the nightstand and takes off his jeans. Before long, the duvet that Dan has wrapped himself in is pushed up and long, cold limbs wrap around his body. Dan makes a shocked sound as he instinctively squirms to get away from the freezing calves and arms.

Phil holds on with a laugh.

“Sorry, did I scare you?” he asks.

Dan makes a frustrated noise, but he stops moving.

“You’re freezing,” he complains.

“It’s cold out,” Phil says, and Dan can hear the pout. “Warm me up?”

Dan turns around and it doesn’t take him more than a look at Phil’s precious put upon expression for him to melt. He wraps his arms around him and holds him close, as his heart aches with affection that feels is coming in spite of the confusing conversation he just overheard.

Phil must notice something is going on, because he stops talking when Dan cradles his head and pushes his face against the side of his neck. They breathe slowly together, and their legs tangle. Phil’s arm lies delicate over Dan’s waist. He brushes his hand over Dan’s back in idle patterns.

He keeps quiet until he starts to grab at the material of Dan’s, Phil’s, shirt and looks down.

“Did you already get up?” he asks. “These are my clothes.”

“Congratulations, Sherlock,” Dan mutters in fake exasperation. “I had to wee.”

Phil shifts to the side and Dan lies down on his back. He feels vulnerable under the weight of Phil’s gaze as he seems to appraise the look of Dan’s upper body.

“You look good in this,” Phil murmurs.

He rubs his hand between Dan’s pecks and down his stomach, pulling at the shirt again as if he can’t get enough of how tightly it fits him. Dan breathes.

He wants to indulge, but he feels scared to. PJ is in the other room and he is not happy that Dan is here, after all.

“Why is PJ here?” Dan asks.

Phil sighs. For a moment, his smile drops and he looks exhausted.

“Work,” Phil says flatly.

Dan puts his palm over Phil’s hand to stop the nervous movement of it. Phil looks into his eyes.

“It’s the weekend,” Dan says.

“Work doesn’t really stop during the weekend for us,” Phil shrugs.

Dan has no idea what that means. All he knows is that he doesn’t like it because last night, Phil had a panic attack. Because Phil has been working too hard again and it is starting to wear on him. Dan wishes they could have some time for themselves, uninterrupted, for selfish reasons but mostly because Phil needs time to recharge.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Phil says, and the smile returns to his face.

Dan rubs the back of Phil’s head.

“Is PJ the one in charge of this project?” Dan asks.

Phil raises an eyebrow in surprise.

“No,” he says. “I am, actually. I mean, technically, anyway.”

“So what is he doing bossing you around?” Dan asks.

Phil twists in discomfort. Dan is not uncomfortable. It feels important to talk about this.

“He’s not bossing me around,” Phil says.

He sounds so sullen as he sits up and turns his back to Dan. Dan sits up in bed as Phil hands him a to go coffee cup.

“I don’t want them to get cold.”

Phil doesn’t even look at him as he says it. Dan’s stomach sinks harder than it did when he first woke up.

“Phil,” he says.

When Phil looks at him, the purple has faded and all Dan sees is a person. Someone that is flawed and scared and vulnerable just like everyone else. Someone that doesn’t have limitless energy to spend on making Dan feel good and safe all the time.

Perhaps the panic attack should have made Dan consider that, but it didn’t make Dan feel hurt in the way that Phil’s mood does right now. Phil looks and sounds like Dan is doing everything wrong, and that is terrifying. 

Dan doesn’t want to make mistakes with Phil. He can’t make mistakes with Phil.

“I’m sorry,” Dan says.

“No,” Phil says. “Don’t be.”

Dan doesn’t know how to respond to that. There is a new wall between them.

He takes a sip of coffee. It tastes like caramel and chocolate and it is fucking delicious.

“Good?” Phil asks with a smirk.

“Amazing,” Dan says. “Thank you.”

They look into each other’s eyes for an awkward moment. Phil’s lips go tight as he takes a preparing breath.

“I was the one that asked PJ to come over,” he says.

_I was the one that decided that I didn’t want today to be ours_ , is what Dan hears.

“Oh.”

Phil sighs.

“I wanted to spend the day with you, but there’s so much to do,” he says. “It sucks.”

The idea of actually going home is daunting.

Dan has no answer, so he doesn’t give one. They drink their coffees in silence until Phil pulls his laptop up and puts on an episode of The Legend of Korra. They watch and eat the breakfast bagels Phil brought and by the time they have finished their food and coffee, Dan is on top of Phil. The laptop has been closed and pushed to the end of the bed. They kiss and move together, hungry for touch like the conversation they just had didn’t happen.

Dan doesn’t know who initiated this, really. Things just seem to happen like this with Phil.

“I don’t want to go home,” Dan says.

Phil’s lips are kissed red, his skin is flushed. He looks absolutely gorgeous.

“I don’t want you to, either,” Phil says.

They don’t get to stay looking at each other as the words make space between them because just as they do, there is a knock on Phil’s bedroom door. Dan flies off from Phil’s body and they pull the duvet up to cover themselves.

“Yeah?” Phil asks on an inhale.

“Mate,” is all that PJ says from the other side of Phil’s bedroom door.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” Phil says.

Dan is only thankful for the fact that PJ didn’t actually open the door. That relief doesn’t stay around, though, because then Phil looks back at him with a hesitance Dan didn’t realise that Phil could feel towards him.

He doesn’t want to make Phil feel unsure. He doesn’t want Phil to think that he is unhappy with him, or what they are doing. Dan is disappointed that a day he had expected would be all theirs won’t be, but he doesn’t want the last remaining moments they have today to be about that. 

At the same time, Dan has no idea how to meet this hesitancy. He wants to try. For the first time, Dan can’t fully understand Phil, but he wants to.

He feels a wave of emotion as he watches Phil fiddle with the material of the duvet and bite his lip.

“Baby,” is what Dan ends up saying.

That is all it takes for Phil to cover his face with his hands and turns away from him. Dan doesn’t know how to meet that, either.

“What’s going on?” Dan asks, gentle in tone as he shifts closer and puts a hand on Phil’s shoulder.

Phil leans into him until their arms are wrapped around one another and the side of Phil’s face is squished against the front of Dan’s shirt.

“I’m stressed out,” Phil whispers, eventually.

Dan tucks his chin on top of Phil’s head and makes sure that he holds on tightly, like Phil likes him to.

“I hate that you’re seeing me like this.”

“I don’t,” Dan says.

Phil moves until he is looking up at Dan. His eyes are wet.

“I’m here for you, too,” Dan says, and hopes that it will get through to Phil. “You are allowed to feel sad or stressed out or angry when I’m around.”

There are a million conflicts in Phil’s expression, and Dan doesn’t know what a single one of them is about.

“I just want you to talk to me,” Dan finishes, because he can’t stand more of this confusion.

Phil’s mouth twists.

“Phil,” Dan says, begs.

Just as Phil opens his mouth to speak, there is another knock.

Dan groans loudly. He hopes that PJ hears it.

“Don’t,” Phil whispers.

Dan softens at that. He can’t not.

“I just don’t want you to have to strain yourself like this,” Dan says. “You’re clearly struggling right now.”

“Can I just-”

Phil moves out of Dan’s arms and it makes a piece fall off of Dan’s glass heart. It is stronger now, there are sturdy materials protecting it, but Phil physically pushing him away like this could be enough for Dan to crumble completely. A few stray pieces falling off is nothing in comparison.

Once there is distance between them, Phil puts on his jeans and gets up from bed. Dan gets up on the other side. He tries not to look upset, but he feels like he is barely holding himself together at this point.

“I should go,” he says, making sure there is no emotion slipping through in his voice.

“Dan,” Phil says.

There is plenty of emotion to find in Phil’s voice, none of which Dan really understands right now.

Phil has been pushing him away and pulling him back in over and over again this morning.

“I don’t want to,” Dan says. “I just think it’s better if you two finish whatever needs to be done, and then...”

He gestures at nothing, at a loss for what comes after that. He doesn’t know if Phil wants him to come back even after that. He doesn’t dare to make that assumption right now.

He doesn’t know what Phil wants him to say. He doesn’t know if Phil even wants him right now.

Dan feels it in his gut, in his chest, in his throat, in his goddamn _legs_ , when Phil gives a tight nod in response.

“Okay,” is what Dan can hardly hear him say through the rush of thoughts in his head. “I guess that’s best.”

If Dan speaks right now, he will break. 

He doesn’t want Phil to watch him break. Not now, not when he feels like Phil is slipping between his fingers for reasons unknown. Not only because today didn’t turn out like he wanted it to. That part of it is fine. It is Phil’s uncertainty and pulling away that is unnerving. He hasn’t simply said he needs time to work with PJ today. All he has done is been vague and sad without answering Dan’s questions about it.

Phil is stressed out. He might still be feeling the effects of last night’s panic attack.

Still, when Dan puts on his own clothes on and gets his bag, Phil’s eyes are so sad and distant that Dan has a hard time remembering what they looked like when they were bright and endless in compassion only hours ago.

But Dan does remember. That is what makes it hurt the most.

Dan passes PJ in the living room without a word. Phil follows his trail and stops by the hallway. He watches in silence as Dan puts on his shoes and coat. Looking back up at his face, there are even more new walls between them. The don’t have windows. They have no doors. Dan think he has got a key, but there is no lock to put it in.

Phil reaches for him. Dan steps into his arms without a second thought.

“I’m sorry,” Phil says.

That much is genuine. There is nothing standing between Dan and Phil’s remorse. That is what he can allow Dan to see right now, it seems. Dan hadn’t realised that Phil is that deliberate in choosing what parts of him Dan gets to see.

“Can we talk about this later?” Dan asks.

Phil gives a nod and they part.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll ring you.”

That is all that Dan is going to leave with. A half hearted promise coming from an expression that shows so much and so little that Dan is going to go crazy with it.

It makes him angry. It doesn’t seem fair. And so he acts on his first impulse.

“Cool,” Dan says in a cold tone. “I guess I’ll wait by the phone.”

A few walls come down as a look of desperation makes itself known on Phil’s face. He takes hold of Dan’s wrist when Dan opens the front door.

“Dan,” he says.

Dan shakes his head.

“Don’t.”

Phil lets go of his wrist. They share a heavy look as Dan stalls for a second. If Phil has something to say now, Dan will give him the opportunity to say it.

Phil doesn’t take that opportunity to explain. Instead, he looks away.

Dan can’t bear to look at him for another second. He steps outside and closes the door behind himself quickly before he changes his mind. He rids his mind of all thoughts of Phil, knowing they will shatter him.

He manages to skip down the stairs and begin to walk towards the tube for a minute before his legs shake and he has to stop. He steadies himself against a building and looks down. Everything that has been building up inside of him is nearing the surface, threatening to spill out of him. The colour of Phil begins to fade in his achromatic puzzle of pieces that always seem to get filled in and then erased and never replaced. Dan is going on empty.

Outside, in the approaching cold of November, there are no more yellow leaves to be found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: No Light No Light by Florence + The Machine


	51. Chapter 51

Today is the day of the Halloween Scavenger Hunt.

All over the world, fans of Fall Whisperer are searching for three hidden items within the game. The usernames of the people that find these items in time get put in a lottery of sorts, where three random winners are picked. The prize and the winners are both announced on October thirty first.

Dan doesn’t really indulge in this tradition. He plays his oldest save file in offline mode to search for the items only in order to complete his personal challenge collection.

The prizes aren’t anything amazing, in Dan’s opinion. Usually, the winners get sent some merchandise or gets a free pass to an upcoming convention. Dan doesn’t go to conventions and he doesn’t get merch. He has the amethyst, but its presence on his desk beside his monitor does not bring him joy. Dan’s thoughts of Fall Whisperer have become intertwined with his thoughts of Phil, and right now, Dan doesn’t want to think about Phil.

Or, he does. Thinking about Phil fills Dan up with excitement, but some of that excitement has some added fear and confusion now. Adding to that, Phil hasn’t called, or texted, or done anything to communicate with Dan since he left a few hours ago. The day isn’t over, there is time, but Dan is feeling impatient.

His friends are online and they are all participating in the scavenger hunt. Mason is planning on posting a fic oneshot for the first time in weeks. He is going to do so in the hopes that all the nay-sayers are busy enough with the scavenger hunt for the fic to go unnoticed by them.

Dan can barely take reading it, when Mason sends a link to the document to the group chat. Any mention of intimacy and closeness and feeling reminds him of Phil. Mason’s description of Dye holding White in bed fills Dan’s head with this morning. It makes it difficult to pretend like it didn’t happen.

Regardless of what he reads or watches or who he talks to, Dan can’t seem to get this morning out of his head.

Dan doesn’t obsess. Not anymore.

Or, so he thought. That could very well be the reason why Phil is distancing himself from him. When Dan becomes dependent on someone, it doesn’t go unnoticed. Even if that isn’t what the other person thinks he is doing, whatever their interpretation of Dan’s behaviour is ends up weighing on them. 

Dan always tries his hardest to seem nonchalant. He pushes against this part of himself when it involves another person, but all that it does is make things confusing. What used to feel good turns sour, because Dan is too scared to give in to feeling. He doesn’t want to depend on another person. His parents made it clear from the very start that it isn’t something that Dan can or should do.

A text message makes Dan’s desk vibrate. He practically throws himself at his phone. There is no question in his mind that Phil finally got done working and has time to have a proper chat now.

It isn’t Phil. Of course it isn’t.

**Dad** : We arrive at 12pm on Monday. You should meet us at the train station.

Dan’s stomach twists so hard it hurts.

Susanne said that he doesn’t have to confront them now if he isn’t ready. But she told him that he has a right to have control over his own time. The time that Dan spends not at work is not up for grabs by anyone else but him. There is a reason why he is unable to work a full week, and those reasons being due to mental illness do not make them any less viable than if he had a physical illness.

Maybe Dan presses the call button in his and Dad’s conversation because, if he can’t have a talk with Phil, he will have one with Dad instead. No matter the reason, he feels ready to have that conversation now.

Dan wants to resolve things. He wants his life to get better. He doesn’t want to let himself be pushed around like this anymore. It isn’t a way for him to live. He started to think about it that way with Lucy, when they had their talk. It has increased tenfold after his conversation with Jimmy. Dan would probably not have been able to express himself as well as he did with Phil earlier if him and Jimmy hadn’t had that conversation. Not that their communication was in any way perfect, but at least Dan tried.

Dan wants to try some more. His cave is bright with colours now. He can take another step.

It seems oddly casual when Dad answers. 

“Are you calling to complain?” is how he greets him.

Of course, Dan asking for basic respect is a needless complaint.

“You can’t come on Monday,” Dan says, his heart in his throat. “It doesn’t work for me.”

“And why not? We can’t come for the rest of the week if we don’t do it that day.”

Part of Dan asks himself if he should really be doing this. Is it really needed? Is he asking himself that question because that is what he was taught to do?

“I just can’t on Monday,” Dan says. “I don’t have to explain myself.”

Even if he can’t see Dad’s face, he can sense the frustration on the other end of the line. He knows exactly the thought process going on in those slightly too loud breaths.

“You don’t, huh?” Dad asks. “After not talking to us for two months you won’t even let us visit.”

“I have talked to you,” Dan immediately corrects him. “And it has nothing to do with that.”

This is what Dad does. He turns it around, and makes himself into a victim. Because Dan is such a horrendous person for wanting to have a say in when they visit.

“This is what you always do,” Dad says. “You expect everyone to do what you want. You always have to control every situation.”

“No, I just don’t want you to come on Monday,” Dan says. His heart is pounding and his throat is tight. “I do want to see you, I just can’t on Monday.”

Dad scoffs. Again, Dan feels like he is making something out of nothing, but he knows that that voice in his head does not belong to himself. It belongs to Dad, and to Mum; to the spectator that is the result of their years of emotional abuse and manipulation.

“Fine,” Dad says, but it’s not really fine. “So you’ll pay for the flat yourself too, then?”

Dan’s eyes immediately fill with tears. 

Love is earned. Help is earned. Dad knows exactly what button to press when Dan isn’t budging.

Guilt. Boundless amounts of guilt, stored in Dan’s body, eating him up from the inside.

“I will at some point,” he says, quietly.

Dad is getting to him. He can sense the joy in Dad as Dan finally cowers to his will. It is disgusting that it works, and that Dan knows exactly why and how it is happening, and yet he plays along. He can so clearly see that this is wrong, but it is so deeply instilled in him that it feels nearly impossible to break out of even though he is now aware of what is happening.

“Until then, can I at least decide when we visit?” Dad asks, and he makes it sound like a nice compromise. “I don’t want to fight, bear. We can talk about this.”

Dad’s version of talking about things is giving a long lecture that Dan immediately dissociates from. He has been told what a disrespectful, needy brat he is enough times that he could probably recite that speech word for word.

“I don’t want to fight either,” Dan says, and he means it. “I just can’t on Monday, okay? I’m sorry I haven’t been talking to you a lot, but you know why that happens.”

“I don’t know why you keep bringing that up,” Dad sighs. “It wasn’t that bad. People have it so much worse.”

Dan wants to scream. That kind of denial may work for Dad, but it doesn’t for Dan. There is no way in hell that he will reduce what he went through to something that ‘wasn’t that bad’. There is no fucking way that he will ever accept their version of his life anymore. He loves his family, he wants to be accepted by them, but when it comes to this he is trying his much to get so little in return, and that is not about him trying to create a conflict. They are the ones that make it into an argument. He loves them, but they will never see eye to eye on that. And so, their interactions have to be limited, even if Dad won’t understand. Maybe Mum could understand, if Dan tried to explain it to her.

Dad only acknowledges that what Mum did to them was wrong when it is convenient to him. When he wants to make Mum feel guilty, or he wants to earn some sympathy points from Dan. He isn’t a bad person, Dan knows that he went through hell too, but he can’t understand the logic in using something like that for his own gain.

“Okay, Dad,” Dan says flatly. “I have to hang up now.”

He doesn’t want to talk any more and somehow get wrapped up in a conversation about Mum. Dad can’t get any more space to talk, because if he does, then he will inevitably convince Dan that they should visit when they want to and Dan can’t have that.

“Don’t be like that,” Dad groans. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yeah, I believe you.” Dan does not believe him. “I just have to go. Bye.”

Dad sighs. For once, he backs off.

“Bye. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

The call ends and Dan stares at the wall for five minutes, as he tries to figure out how he feels about the talk. His hands are shaking. They hardly had an argument, but standing up for himself goes against the core of who Mum and Dad have taught him to be. Going against something so deeply ingrained in himself is terrifying, and ugly, and strange.

The purple of the cave flickers when Dan checks his phone to find no messages from Phil. He decides to send one, himself.

**Dan** : I miss you

He puts the purple night sky emoji and the purple heart emoji next to it.

For a moment, Dan is crushed by a suffocating feeling of loneliness. It feels heavier than it ever did before, but maybe that is because Dan isn’t as used to it now. He has surrounded himself by light for so long that the darkness blinds him, where before his eyes had adjusted enough for him to at least be able to make his way.

His family won’t be on his side, when it comes to this. Mum and Dad manage to convince everyone else that Dan is simply asking too much, because Adrian and Grandma and Grandpa aren’t used to their tactics enough for them to even begin to recognise the signs that Dan picks up on immediately. 

Dan wants Phil to hold him and make him feel like he isn’t a complete waste. Yet he is scared by that desire, because it strangles him. It makes him unable to take this heavy darkness on his own. He has to have people in his life that care for him, but Dan’s version of that is to cling. Part of him wants to call Phil, but that is not what they agreed on. They agreed that Phil should ring him, and that they would talk about this morning when he does.

Phil probably hadn’t noticed that Dan is getting to that point. He was so calm about the ten calls in a row that he can’t have had experience with it before this. But that’s the thing, too. Dan has all of these issues and emotions, but he doesn’t let show. Phil has seen more of him than anyone else has. This part of him, though, this is a part that could really affect his opinion of Dan. And Dan can’t let it show. He can’t make mistakes with Phil.

That is what Dan thought last time he was in a situation like this, too. He can’t make mistakes. And so he does nothing at all; he becomes scared of showing affection because too much affection could make them reject him. Dan never knows what is too much so he ends up not doing enough.

Haley would probably never guess that their problem was that Dan became too attached to her, all of those years ago.

-

It is easy to get distracted while playing Fall Whisperer.

Though there is a straight path to go down in order to get to the end and resolve everything, there is a bunch of other things to do. The story only progresses when the player decides that it is time for it to. There is no time limit, and the world is open enough for the player to explore.

Dan was adamant on completing all of the side quests before the end of the game during his first play through. For him, the satisfaction doesn’t come until it is all done. He wanted to feel that when he finally got to the end, like everything he had been working towards could culminate and he wouldn’t have any leftover tasks to finish.

The side quests didn’t seem to have much meaning, at first. They seemed random and tedious, without really giving the player that sense of accomplishment when one was completed.

It turned out, at the end, that Dan couldn’t have been more wrong about them.

Completing all of those quests before the end was what made Dan’s experience with it matter so much. The game had only been out for a year when he played it, but despite this he was, as far as the people on the forum at the time knew, the first one to get the ending that he did. This unique experience was what gave him a name on the forums back in the day. He hadn’t realised that it was unique when he first made the thread in which he detailed all of his findings and experiences, but it turned out that his discovery of all of these intricacies were because of the fact that he completed those quests. Everything that happened, happened because Dan played the game the way that he did.

Fall Whisperer really is more ambitious than any other game of its kind that Dan had played before it.

The side quests involved everything from helping White clean up his locomotive and trying to get it to work, to finding an impossible-to-find seed in the middle of the forest. The quest with White ends with the realisation that the locomotive is not meant to move. The seed you find in the forest to bring to Dye ends up with the same type of conclusion; it doesn’t grow after Dye plants it. Not until the post-storyline version of the game, anyway.

These are all possibilities for plot points that Dan used to think were lost opportunities. There could have been good resolutions to it, they could have felt meaningful, but all that the player is left feeling is frustration. At some point Dan realised that several of these side quests felt less like quests and more like a character exploration. The tasks from Dye and White that don’t have a conclusion, but explore the backstory of the characters and lore about this world that Seagull created, are not meant to move the story forward. They are meant to enrich it.

In the end, that became just as important to Dan as everything else. Everything had a purpose; even those quests that seemed not to lead anywhere. Dan has played through the game in all the different ways by now, and so has explored enough to see the way every little piece ends up being tied in a nice little knot, even if some of it is subtle. 

While the resolution to the game is satisfying on its own without all of this, Dan completing these quests was the reason why his character didn’t end up matching his shadow, when they first passed to the Shadow Realm.

At first, that made Dan feel like he had done something wrong. Like he had played the game wrong, and needed to do things over. This is not the case. In Dan’s opinion, if there is a correct way to play Fall Whisperer, then the correct way to play it is to make sure you don’t match your shadow on the first try.

What happened after Dan, Dye, and White returned to their own realm was not a do-over. Instead, Dan found out new things, and the game continued like the failure was simply part of the story line, and not something out of the ordinary.

This is cemented by the scene that takes place when they enter White’s locomotive after they return from the other realm. The one where your character gets the opportunity to question what happened, and why. The one where Dye and White’s construction of the enemy is revealed, because they thought that the player needed that idea of an enemy to defeat in order to stay motivated to pass to the other realm. The expected hell version of their world, filled with monsters to defeat was all Dye and White’s doing, when in reality all that exists there is a similar world to theirs, that they all have access to for some reason.

Unless the player fails the first time around and matches their shadow immediately, the ending is incredibly anti climactic. They get a short explanation of why they lied and some of what it all actually means, but not much more. When you fail the first time, you get an opportunity to explore more. You get to ask the questions, and figure things out, in a much deeper way than if you succeed the first time around.

“You have to Fall,” is what White says at the end of the scene in the locomotive.

This idea of ‘Falling’ is present throughout the game until this point, without an explanation. Now that the idea of matching your shadow had been presented, Dan assumed that ‘Falling’ just that. He didn’t know what it meant. He couldn’t ask more questions in that scene. But as confused as Dan was at this point when he was playing the game for the first time, he was also excited and intrigued. He was ready to figure all of these things out and get them right.

In the context of the game, these insights are exciting. Though they are harsh truths that makes your character suffer at first, it adds a depth that Dan thinks is crucial to enjoy the game to its full extent.

In real life, Dan could stand to never look inward again. Most of what exists inside of him is a hastily constructed sense of self that suits the situation at hand, next to countless shadows and memories, threatening to crush him at all times. It is not a place that Dan would entertain often if he didn’t have to. But, he does have to. Though it hurts, so much good has come of it since he started to explore the cave.

Before he played Fall Whisperer, he refused to look inside. He deliberately didn’t understand himself because the idea of ever attempting to make his thoughts and feelings into something comprehensive terrified him. He didn’t want to know who he was, because he didn’t want to know himself.

In therapy, Dan finally learned the appropriate words to describe himself and what he is going through. Anxiety, depression, abuse, trauma. They are all words that sound negative, and in the context of them actually happening, they are. But as simple terms, they are not negative or positive. They simply are. Nothing bad has happened only because Dan finally has words to describe the state he is in.

Haley deserved a person that knew themselves, when they were together. Instead, she was dealt with the pieces of a person that was horrendously incapable of communicating their needs because they didn’t dare to think for long enough to come to a conclusion. Then again, Haley has never really let him forget that. They have different types of resentment towards one another, but it is mutual, existing just below the surface.

Still, there are parts of Dan’s psyche that he has yet to explore. He keeps telling himself that he will bring it up with Susanne when he feels ready to. Managing relationships and defining sexual orientation is a door that Dan is scared to open. ‘Gay’ is only a start. It is a simplification. It is not the final answer. The path to figuring out the _correct_ answer is too muddy for Dan to want to walk it. He can’t imagine finding anything other than confusion, and his life is confusing enough as it is already.

Haley never understood Dan. She doesn’t understand him now. And yet, Dan feels the desire to talk to her about Phil. He wants to ask her what he should do to stop all of the bad before it gets worse, because she has experience with the ‘worse’. He wants to ask Haley what she would have wanted him to do, back when they were together.

Talking to her about Jimmy did nothing but make Dan feel rejected and confused. He should stop himself from indulging in this impulse.

Despite all of that, Dan ends up walking down the stairs. He knocks on Haley and Lucy’s front door, and waits for the simplified version of him that exists in Haley’s limited perception of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Tired Of Waiting For You by The Kinks


	52. Chapter 52

It is obvious that Haley has been back home for a while now. Hers and Lucy’s shared flat is practically spotless. The previously disorganised bills are now stacked in neat little piles of paper, and there are no brown spots on the leaves of the potted plants standing in two opposite corners in the living room. There are no stray bags of chips or left out plates or mugs. Instead, the eye is drawn to the fluffy pink blanket that is draped over the back of their grey two seater sofa. It looks inviting enough on its own, but the two pink candles on the coffee table makes the place look so cosy and serene that it is practically irresistible.

There are traces of Lucy, though. There are a couple of framed posters of her favourite bands hanging next to the TV, and a pair of smudged glasses left on the coffee table. Everything else screams ‘Haley’. The fact that Lucy was the one that took Haley in, and not the other way around, doesn’t matter. Dan wasn’t surprised when he started to notice the way Haley’s interior style and need for an organised environment started to take over Lucy’s ‘don’t care’ way of living.

Dan can’t feel serenity here, even if that is the intention. All he can feel is the anxious way that Haley keeps this up as a revolt against the environment she grew up in. Haley might feel that, too, when she visits Dan. Dan wouldn’t be disappointed if that isn’t the case, though. He learned a long time ago that you can’t expect Haley to pick up on things that are subtextual. There is no use in feeling hurt by it.

Coming over unannounced is not something Dan can do without getting all the usual jabs. Dan sits in the armchair with a blanket wrapped around himself while Haley sits on the sofa, her laptop shut next to her as she laments about how she hasn’t heard from him since last week, wrapped up in passive aggressive wording that leaves Dan feeling drained within the first five minutes of talking.

“It’s been a lot of stuff since the club last weekend,” he says, though he is careful not to make it sound like an explanation. 

He has no reason to explain himself. If he does it anyway, it only puts him in the position of having to apologise for something that he doesn’t feel sorry about.

“I’m kind of---,” Dan stops himself, considering it, “---something, with Phil.”

“Phil?” Haley asks.

Dan’s heart beats harder. He hates talking about these things with Haley.

“He’s a friend of Jimmy’s,” Dan explains. “We’ve been friends for a couple months already.”

Haley makes a face. Her eyebrows shoot up high on her forehead and her mouth twists.

“Geez,” she says. “That’s cold.”

“What?” Dan asks, already feeling angry.

“Didn’t you just break up with Jimmy?”

Of course Lucy talked about it with Haley.

“We weren’t together-together,” Dan says, keeping his cool. “And no, it’s been pretty long since we stopped hooking up.”

Every time he talks with Haley, there is something he ends up having to defend himself over. He isn’t sure if it is deliberate on her part or if she treats everyone like this. It doesn’t really matter. The reason he was drawn to her in the first place was because of some subconscious reminder of his parents.

Haley makes another face.

“Alright,” she says. “Kudos, I guess. You get around.”

Describing what Dan has with Phil like that is completely uncalled for and unfair. Dan says nothing. The only words on the tip of his tongues are cutting, cold, and juvenile. He swallows them down and watches Haley’s expression settle as she suddenly becomes anxious. As much as she does these things, the moment that Dan stops playing along, she gets scared. Sometimes, Dan thinks Haley doesn’t like him much. But her insistence of keeping him in her life is still present, though it only seems to stem from a misdirected sense of possessiveness.

“Sorry,” Haley says. “I’m just lonely, I guess.”

Dan draws the blanket tighter around himself and feels himself defuse. He can’t ask for more than an apology.

“I get it,” Dan says. “I’m usually lonely, too.”

Haley hums. An awkward silence settles between them.

Dan’s desire to talk to Haley about Phil is starting to waver. It feels wrong, almost. No matter what he says about what Phil means to him, no descriptor could accurately portray what exists between them. Dan hardly knows what it is. All he knows is that it is powerful, so much so that Phil’s deviation from his normal behaviour earlier today hurts that much more than if it were anyone else.

If he tried to, Dan could access the feelings he used to feel for Haley. That type of thing doesn’t really go away. Any time he has been in love, the feeling and experience has been so different from the last that he hardly recognises the feeling at first. Before Haley, Dan had only had mild crushes on boys at school, and fooled around with some sort-of friends that he would hang out with at the park.

His first proper experience of being in love, being with a girl, put him into a tailspin. Something about himself that had seemed so obvious to everyone else, something that people would scrutinise and physically attack him over, could just as well not be true. The feeling of relief he used to think he should have felt was replaced by a fear of what he had with Haley.

Dan had no words to describe himself. He didn’t want to look inside and ask himself what he wanted or who he liked, because he was too afraid of the answer being something he didn’t want it to be. He still attached fully to Haley, though. He followed her around all the time, he felt as though his safety depended on his relationship with her. And Haley gave so much in return. Though much of their relationship was filled with arguments and silent resentment, Dan knew that Haley was in love with him and wanted him. They had so many amazing moments.

Haley would never guess that Dan was actually in love with her, attracted to her, and overly attached to her. He isn’t sure if she even should know. Despite the affection he once felt towards her, that consumed him, Haley doesn’t understand him. Maybe that is why Dan still holds on to that resentment. It makes it easier to go along with Haley’s version of what happened; Dan was gay and used her as a beard and was unable to feel anything for those reasons.

His issue was never with attraction, but attachment. He does too much or too little with no inbetween.

They had connected straight away, as friends. He didn’t stop her when she confessed her feelings to him and they became official. Dan thought that it could be a nice cover up, and they were already best friends after all.

It should have worked the other way around. It shouldn’t have all become complicated when Dan began to reciprocate those feelings. He should have been happy about it. It was what he had wanted, after all. Everything in his life at that point had indicated that being gay was wrong. So an attraction to someone of the opposite sex should have been a relief, but it wasn’t.

So Haley doesn’t know what really happened between them. Dan had been so scared of figuring things out about himself that he couldn’t be intimate with her even if he knew he wanted to. In a way, he was scared to hope for the opportunity to be ‘normal’. It works out, calling it a gay thing. It sounds reasonable to say that it was all about Dan being unable to feel anything for her, and that he was using her as a beard. That would make sense.

So does covering everything he went through when he moved back home up with it being due to Dan’s depression and nothing else. So does calling what he had with Jimmy a ‘friends with benefits’ situation.

Those explanations make sense. They are easy to swallow. But they aren’t true.

Things never got better for Dan before he accepted what was true, even if it hurt. Labels help him in his situation with mental illness. Before he accepted those, he felt strangled and scared to put himself in a box. Calling his problems ‘depression’ or ‘trauma’ made them seem permanent.

Once Susanne started to use those words with him, they had the opposite effect. Instead of worrying over the permanency of his conditions, he instead felt it was possible to get help, and like he wasn’t making things up and feeling sad for no reason. 

Despite this, Dan feels just as scared about labelling his sexuality as he used to do about labelling his mental health problems. When he has called himself gay in the past, even if those times have been few and far between, it has been for lack of a better word. His aversion to talking about relationships and sexuality with Susanne is perhaps due to these reasons. Dan is scared of feeling misunderstood. He is complex and contradictory of himself, and it terrifies him. It feels like chaos. It doesn’t make sense. But then, maybe the truth is more important than making sense. 

“I’m in love with him,” Dan ends up saying, when he can’t take the silence anymore.

Haley looks appropriately surprised. Dan has never said this about anyone before.

“Oh,” she says.

“He likes me, too,” Dan continues, “but he’s pulling away.”

Dan gets choked up only from saying the words. Haley frowns.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“I slept over last night. Everything was mostly fine.”

Dan chooses not to talk about the panic attack. That is not a story for him to tell.

“Then, this morning, he was acting strange. He is working on a project with a couple friends and he had called one of them over to work on it, when I was expecting to spend the day with him. He wouldn’t explain it at all, and he seemed sad. Like he was trying to push me away for some reason, but feeling sad about it at the same time. As if he didn’t really want to do it.”

Dan takes a breath. He spends so much time twisting things over in his head, and yet he hadn’t realised what that situation really felt like until now. Now that he has, he feels adamant that it must be true. He just can’t figure out why.

“Why would he do that?” Haley asks. “Have you told him you like him?”

They look into each other’s eyes and Dan’s heart hurts. That is usually his problem. It is unfair that Haley doesn’t know that that was part of their problem as well.

“I have,” Dan says. “For once, there hasn’t been any weirdness about that.”

And the one time there isn’t, that person pushes him away. Dan feels it in every fibre of his being, the impulse to isolate because apparently interacting with the world never works in his favour. Apparently, all his worst fears end up coming true.

“Wow,” Haley says. “I’m sorry.”

She isn’t the type to give advice. Dan knows this, but part of him wishes that she was, just this once.

“We used to be together,” Dan says. “What do you think I could’ve done differently?”

Haley actually laughs.

“It wasn’t the same,” she reasons, shaking her head. “You know that.”

Dan feels his insides twist when he notices how sure she seems to feel about that version of their relationship. There is a mixture of guilt and determination, swirling in his stomach. Guilt, because he always felt guilty about how things ended between them. Determination, because there are some parts of the past that you don’t have to dig up. Dan always thought that this was one of them.

“But,” Haley continues, “I guess I know what you’re like as a friend now. And what you were like back then, too. Even if it was different.”

It was different. Dan can’t say it wasn’t. It was ten years ago, after all. Haley is just wrong about the parts that are the same.

“You feel distant, a lot of the time,” Haley says. “We can have fun for an evening, and it feels like everything is normal, and then you disappear. Either you don’t answer my texts or, if we do see each other, you refuse to talk about yourself. It’s like you shut down, sometimes.”

_Detached._

In a way, Dan used to hold on to that word. He hated himself for doing it. He couldn’t feel present in any friendship or relationship, because the wall was up and he was too scared to tear it down. He might not have realised it at the time, but it was all because of his tendency to cling, and become dependent. Dan is so unsure of how to do these things, that he always ends up turning to extremes.

Haley was subjected to one of those extremes. He clung to her. And yet she sees it in a completely different way.

“Yeah,” Dan sighs.

Normally, it makes him angry when Haley says things like that. He immediately gets defensive. He has no reason to, though. She is right. The only reason that Dan defends himself is because there is more to the story than Haley knows. There are reasons as to why Dan gets distant, and why there is this permanent gap in their communication.

Haley has never had a chance to remedy any of it, because she has no fucking idea what is going on. That is not her fault. It is Dan’s.

“Doesn’t really matter, though,” Haley shrugs. “It wasn’t the same.”

For the first time, Dan recognises the guilty feeling inside as pain. A pain that he has held on to for all these years, because he had to carry it alone. A pain in giving Haley the wrong version of what her first relationship really was like. Dan broke up with her because he had to. He couldn’t bear to keep hurting her. 

Jimmy thought that it was good, when he did it with them. Dan always felt like it was his way of giving up.

He didn’t fall out of love with Haley. Not until much later.

Haley deserves to know that her first relationship wasn’t with someone that was unable to have feelings for her. The guilt and the determination twists and turns into only determination, one that Dan can’t back down from. His heart starts to pound inside his chest.

“Yes it was.”

It is mumbled out, but Haley still hears him.

“No,” she immediately disagrees. “You’re gay, remember? It wasn’t real.”

Dan sits up straight and looks into her eyes. They were so young, when they met. They were defined by their difficult home situations and the attempt to keep up appearances for other people’s sake, all the time. They found each other in that darkness. They found refuge in those shared experiences, even though it took them a good while before they truly talked about it. There was some type of understanding there, even if Haley never could figure Dan out fully.

Haley may be bad at picking up on things, but it is Dan’s silence that has caused all of these years of miscommunication. It is time to change that. It is time to start talking.

It turns out, he doesn’t have to. It dawns on Haley before Dan has time to say another word. For a moment, Dan thinks he sees the girl he fell in love with behind the worn layers of resentment and betrayal.

“Yeah,” Dan says to the look of realisation. “It was real.”

“So you’re not gay?” is the first thing that Haley asks.

Dan says nothing. As much as he wants to communicate now, he doesn’t actually have an answer to that.

“Fuck, Dan.”

She sits back and takes a breath. There is an uproar of conflicting emotions in her, Dan can tell.

“I’m sorry,” Dan says, and he means it. “I was so fucking confused and you deserved better. I was literally afraid of my feelings for you because--”

Haley looks at him, and for once, she looks like she understands.

“--because I thought that if I acted on them, I’d realise they weren’t real.”

“How do you know that wouldn’t have been the case?” Haley asks. “You never tried.”

Something twists in Dan’s chest.

“I just do,” Dan says. “I know a lot of things now that I didn’t know then.”

Haley’s chin quivers and she looks away.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” she whispers, staring at the coffee table.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Dan says.

She looks back up at him, and the resentment comes back full force.

“Oh, because that would absolutely destroy me, would it?” she asks. “Like I’m still holding on to it? Everything’s got to be about you, yeah? You and your non confrontational fucking wimp personality.”

Haley breathes out a wet breath and shakes her head at herself.

“I just mean, it’s not like I would be angry at you for it,” she says. “I was hardly a person back then compared to now. I know how fucked up everything was. What upsets me is that you bring it up like it would be a big deal to me now.”

“Okay,” Dan says, because no matter the person, being subjected to an emotional rant like this causes him to shut down mentally like he always has when Dad does it. “I don’t mean it like it’s a big deal to you. I can’t know that. It’s a big deal to me, though.”

Haley frowns in confusion.

“It’s fucking hard for me to talk about this stuff,” Dan says, and all the air leaves his lungs.

Suddenly, he feels hopeless. He is floating aimlessly, with nothing to ground him. He doesn’t know if Phil is going to want to talk to him, later. Haley isn’t a comforting person to him; she simply doesn’t hold back. His parents are upset with him, so Dan can’t talk to Dad like he does when there is no one else to turn to.

He just said something that feels huge to him to a person that often seems to only care about herself. For all Dan knows, Haley is going to use this against him at some point.

This is why Dan doesn’t tell people things. This is why he should keep his life small. This is why he should be alone, and wait out his life, because you can’t fix something that only keeps breaking.

Those thoughts are only the first that come up, though. The second wave of thoughts, Susanne says, is what matters. And the second wave of thoughts Dan thinks are completely different. He wants to tell people things, because he wants to live rather than exist. He has no reason to keep his life small. He can delve into territories that scare him, and take the steps he needs to to make them stop scaring him.

He knows that letting Haley know about his true feelings for her, back when they were together, is part of him figuring himself out in terms of sexual orientation.

“I know,” Haley says.

Her hand is on Dan’s. Dan’s heart stutters. Come to think of it, Dan never gave her an opportunity to comfort him before.

“They were horrible to you.”

Dan’s eyes shut as he steels himself. He hates thinking about that. He can’t think about that.

“What’s going on, Dan?”

With a heavy breath, Dan manages to relax his muscles if only slightly.

“Nothing,” he responds as his eyes open. “I’m fine. What about you, though?”

“I’m good,” she says, raising an eyebrow. He can see the tension in one of her shoulders. “I’m worried about you, though.”

“Why?” Dan asks.

“You’re being weird.”

Dan forces himself to smile.

“Thanks,” he jokes.

Haley smiles back. The resentment has faded. Something new appears in her gaze.

Dan no longer gets a feel of Haley’s limited perception of him. Her perception of him has expanded. He is more than just one thing to her, now. 

“I love you, you know,” Haley says.

It comes out awkward. They never say things like this. Dan feels like he is about to cry.

He stops floating. Haley’s affection grounds him into the moment.

“I love you too,” Dan says.

“I’m sure Phil does, too,” Haley says. “I think you just need to talk to him. Even if you felt something for me back then, we’re so different now just like you said. I can’t really apply my experience to your situation now.”

“I just hope he will actually talk to me,” Dan says. “I need him.”

It is embarrassingly true. It doesn’t feel wrong to think that, right now. For as much as Dan should stay wary about attaching too hard and placing his worth in another person’s perception of him, he can still need people. He can still want people. He is allowed to do that. Love is not a thing that should only be for people that learned how love works from the start.

The thing that Dan feels with Phil, is that Phil could teach him what it is really about. What it is really supposed to be. What it actually should feel like, when it is healthy and mutual, when there is no push or pull. When it isn’t deserved, or earned, but simply is. If he learned what that is like, maybe Dan wouldn’t feel so desperate to keep it that he ends up strangling it.

But then, maybe it is too late now.

“I’ve never heard you talk about anyone or anything like that,” Haley says. “Except for food, I guess.”

It surprises Dan so much that he cackles out a shocked laugh. Haley looks thrilled by the reaction.

“What the fuck!” Dan squeaks through his laughter. “I thought we were having a moment here.”

“You’ve had several moments about food, too,” Haley grins.

“Well, that sounds rude, doesn’t it?” Dan shoots back.

Haley shakes her head and her face turns red when she realises what he means.

“No,” she says, but her shoulders are shaking with held back laughter. “No, no, no.”

When the storyline is done, the unusable seed that Dye planted begins to grow. It gets a second chance at life, or better yet, it might still be on its first try. It could be that it simply took a bit longer for it to grow large enough for other people to notice.

This is on Dan’s mind as he stays at Haley’s to distract himself for long enough to still be there when Lucy comes home in the evening . The three of them order a pizza and play video games and suddenly, one o’clock in the morning arrives without a single message or call from Phil.

Dan has no interest in walking up the two flights of stairs to his flat. There is only doubt and anxiety to find in it.

What he finds as he falls asleep on Haley and Lucy’s sofa is not solace, but at least it isn’t as bad as it would have been if he were alone tonight. Dan pulls up his conversation with Phil. 

Dan’s last message is marked ‘read’.

Dan scrolls up. There are lightning bolts and black hearts and rain clouds. There is >3 and stupid conversations about kinks and science experiments. Dan feels like he is reminiscing as he reads them back, but the truth is that most of them were sent in the past two or three weeks.

 **Dan** : it’s been a few hours and i still miss you >3

This message is immediately marked ‘read’. Phil was already looking at their conversation. Maybe he was considering saying something, or maybe he was reading it back, too. Whatever the reason is, it makes Dan hold his breath as he waits for a response. Phil is in another place but he is looking at the same thing that Dan is, and for a moment that feels like connection.

There is no response. There isn’t even a tease of a bubble appearing to indicate that Phil is typing even if he ended up changing his mind. Dan doesn’t know what is worse, but no sign of life besides a ‘read’ check mark is devastating to him right now.

Dan puts away his phone and buries his face in the pillow, willing himself not to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Feels Like Heaven by Fiction Factory


	53. Chapter 53

Waking up, Dan is sprawled across a sofa that is too small for his size.

He feels it in his back, and in his neck, and in his ass. The living room is void of people apart from himself, but he can see that the light is on in the kitchen behind the closed door. He sits up and cracks his back. It makes an awful sounds, but it feels good.

The girls have been up for about an hour already, apparently. Walking in, Dan was struck by how cosy they looked in their pyjamas with their coffees by their tiny kitchen table next to the slim window overlooking nothing but a brick wall. Despite thankfully not waking up alone, Dan can’t focus on Haley or Lucy. His mind is only delivering thoughts of Phil. They are everything from the way Phil looks when Dan sucks his dick, to the horrifying idea that the ex Phil mentioned a couple nights ago could be the reason for his silence.

The locomotive at the abandoned railroad outside of the cave does not move when the player first tries to help White get it to work. It remains stagnant. There are no signs of it ever having been able to move, as it doesn’t have the appropriate parts for that to be possible. There are signs of wear, though. The wheels have old, dry dirt on them that does not look like the dirt near the forest. That is what White says, anyway. Dan found no signs for the dirt to somehow be different from the type that surrounds them.

In the post-storyline game, White starts to tell the player stories. It isn’t included as something the player can do in the game, but apparently he has somehow found a way to go on little adventures in the locomotive from time to time. This becomes even more apparent when, at certain times on certain days, White and the locomotive are nowhere to be found, only to return a few in-game hours later.

Some of those times, Dye is nowhere to be found either. When White returns and his dialogue is all about his most recent journey, he never mentions Dye joining him. Regardless, Dan had no doubt at this point, that Dye had gone with him and that they were definitely a couple. 

The forum is full of fan art and fanfic in which they are on one of these journeys. One piece by Morgan has stayed on Dan’s mind today. It is drawn in an old fashioned art style. Dye is standing by the railroad waving a white napkin as White leans out of the window inside of the moving locomotive, blowing him a kiss back.

Morgan wasn’t comfortable posting the most shippy artworks at the time, but this one managed to slip by unnoticed by the people that were against the ship. Dan is glad that it did, because it is one of his favourites. 

Maybe it is on Dan’s mind to bring himself comfort. When White leaves on his little adventures and Dye stays behind on his own, there is no question about whether they will be together again. They are simply doing things in their own lives by their own wills. For all that they share, they are still individuals with separate needs and interests.

It would feel more comforting for Dan to think about this if Phil responded to his messages and calls. They can spend time apart, but when it is because of an unexplained silence it doesn’t feel like being an individual or tending to his own interests. It feels like being ghosted, dumped, by the one person he found he could trust after years of never opening up to anyone.

Dan spends the day with Haley and Lucy, strolling around in London and getting expensive drinks at Starbucks while they go inside random shops to pass the time. It beats sitting at home agonising, but then, Dan is still agonising. He agonises at Starbucks, he agonises inside Primark, and he agonises when they walk around a park and jokingly try to stop Lucy from feeding the squirrels.

In a way, it is worse to feel shit when you are supposed to be having fun. That is yet another reason to self isolate, after all.

Dan can find pleasure in some things, still. He finds a jumper that he likes and isn’t too expensive, so he buys it and he doesn’t bother feeling bad about it. Haley and Lucy both make him laugh. The tension that is often brewing right beneath the surface while the three of them hang out is not present today. Dan even finds himself smiling to himself when a flock of seagulls bathe in a pond in the park. They are loud and obnoxious, the complete opposite of the Seagull he knows, but it still serves as a reminder of something that makes him feel happy.

Dan snaps a picture of them and sends it to Seagull in a DM. He captions it _”i spotted your family lol”_. With a stupid grin on his face, he pockets his phone only to find that Haley and Lucy are both staring at him expectantly.

“So?” Haley asks. “What did he say?”

Dan frowns.

“What did who say?”

Lucy rolls her eyes.

“You’re smiling more now than you have all day,” she says as she lights her cigarette. “Phil finally responded, right?”

Dan’s stomach sinks. He catches Haley shooting Lucy a disapproving glare, and it shocks him out of his thoughts of Phil for a moment. If Haley has ever done that before, Dan hasn’t noticed.

“No,” Dan says, shaking his head. “It was… Someone else.”

Haley and Lucy exchange a meaningful look that Dan can’t decipher.

“And who is this ‘someone else’?” Lucy asks.

_Oh, just a semi famous game writer that I somehow have contact with and still fanboy over enough for other people to notice, apparently._

“No one,” Dan sulks, deliberately putting on a childish voice.

Haley laughs.

“Hey, can I have a cigarette?” Dan asks, reaching out for Lucy’s handbag.

“Dan,” Haley complains.

“Sure,” Lucy says with an odd look.

It changes the topic to Haley going on a rant about how dangerous smoking is, while Dan and Lucy half listen like two bored school children during a lecture. Dan doesn’t care to smoke that much, but that was not why he asked. He is now out of risk of having to explain a part of his life that he is scared that they won’t understand, and that is worth a day or two’s worth of smoker’s breath.

-

The first thing Dye and White want the player to do after their return from the Shadow Realm, is to start collecting. Seeds, plants, fruits, and crystals. They want at least five of every collectible in the game, for reasons unbeknownst to the player.

Dan felt slightly irritated at this point. He had done everything he could possibly do in the game before they first passed through the darkness and into the next realm. He knew exactly where to find every item Dye or White asked for, because he had collected them before. While Dan enjoyed the game as it was, he was anxious to find out what would happen. 

There were differences, though. The shadows weren’t haunting the three of them as much. Most of the time, any glimpse of a shadow was caught in the caves, and even then they kept their distance. They hardly looked threatening anymore. They weren’t dark, brooding figures that suddenly phased into existence to block the player’s path. No, they had gained colour now, and they didn’t appear out of nowhere. Dan thought he could see White and Dye’s shadows at some points, in certain rooms of the cave.

His own was nowhere to be found. He thought about what it had said, back in the other realm.

_”Unbelievable. I’ve been working so hard and you’re still not me.”_

He thought about Shadow-Dye’s question.

_”You have not Fallen yet, have you?”_

He thought of his shadow’s final words.

_”Try harder.”_

Dan thought that it should be impossible for them to match. They weren’t the same. They were from two completely different worlds, and though they were connected, should be unable to truly understand one another. The connection between realms was so flimsy, it might as well have been non existent. All that could be heard were cries of agony and strangers asking for help. That is not something that asks for a peaceful conclusion.

For some time, it seemed as though the game’s progression had stopped. New quests kept coming up, and Dan was starting to believe that there was something that he wasn’t getting. Nothing seemed to be happening, and so, he figured he had to find out what to do himself.

Dan put the fused amethyst and emerald in his inventory, and took to the caves. He hadn’t explored this deep since they passed through, and he hadn’t imagined that it could have changed. But it had. 

When Dan got deep enough in the cave, the levels were glowing amber again. The rainbows of colours they had been shining with for some time had been wiped away. Dan felt unnerved by the dull shade of amber leading his way. He was starting to wonder if some of his progress had been lost.

When Dan finally reached the bottom of the cave, and the darkness, it wasn’t open to him. Dan tried to walk right inside, but his character was pushed away. There was an invisible force field covering its surface, seemingly impenetrable. This was absolutely new. Before they first truly passed through, entering the darkness meant death if you didn’t turn back soon enough. It hadn’t been completely shut like this before. Despite the fact that Dan hadn’t been sure he would have been able to pass through on his own, not even being able to try disappointed him.

After Dan exited the cave that evening, Dye was waiting for him outside of the cave. Dan had never seen him there on his own before.

The cut scene started as soon as Dan clicked him to talk.

There was an audible wind, moving through the forest. A low sound of strings hummed in the background. The set up wasn’t exactly ominous, but it didn’t feel comforting either.

“You tried, did you not?” Dye asked.

The player was not given the choice to respond. Instead, after a short silence, Dye spoke again.

“Why?” he said. “We are happy now.”

Dan was confused. This time, he had the choice to respond.

_> Of course we are. I’m sorry._   
_> No, I’m not._   
_> What do you mean?_

Dan selected the final option. He had no interest in talking back.

When the dialogue box appeared this time, Dye looked defeated.

“The shadows have not been bothering us,” he said. “Everything is like I always wanted it to be.”

Dan felt uncomfortable. He was reminded of Mum. When he played this part of the game for the first time he was still living at home and Mum was deep in the worst of her addiction. The way that Dye was talking now, sounded like Mum did after a detox at the hospital. Unwilling to recognise that there are more steps to take, and absolutely not ready to talk about what happened before. 

Mum pretended like she was transformed, every time she returned home. It never gave Dan any relief. Every time she acted like that, it meant that the next disaster was just around the corner. There was a wall up that Dan couldn’t break through. Complete repression, so obvious that Dan was surprised that Mum didn’t realise that she was doing it.

It was like putting an invisible lid on the darkness, Dan thought. A refusal to open it up out of fear that if you do, you will become consumed by it again. Imagining that the shadows would attack as soon as you glanced at them.

Dan was confused. Since Dye agreed to help with the crystals, he hadn’t been acting on his fear and denial. This felt like taking several steps back.

“Were you able to pass through?” Dye asked.

Dan’s character said ‘no’. There was no option to lie.

“Good,” Dye said. “Then it is working.”

The cut scene ended, and Dan was left with a feeling of unease and impending doom. Dye was making efforts for them not to even be able to attempt going through the darkness again. He was right back where he used to be, at the beginning of the game. Dan felt something like disappointment, and at the same time, sympathy. He knew what it was like to fear the worst that your mind has to offer, when things are finally starting to be at least okay again. He knew how easy it was to pretend that that part of him didn’t exist. He is guilty of doing that now, too, when it comes to certain things.

But shutting it off like that isn’t true progression. It is something that can work to keep you going when you aren’t strong enough to face it yet, but unless you peek inside and start to work through what caused it, there is only so much time that can go on until the lid breaks and the shadows surround you, that much more forceful after having been pushed away.

The first time that Dan visited White in the locomotive after his conversation with Dye, another cutscene started. Dan was given the opportunity to tell White about his conversation with Dye, and so he took it. 

Unexpectedly, White wasn’t disappointed. He didn’t look angry. Instead, there was an air of dejectedness surrounding him.

“I know,” he said. “Don’t pressure him, okay? He’ll come around.”

At this part of the story, it seemed that both Dye and White had changed. White’s way of solving things was usually much more aggressive and in your face than this.

“Keep collecting things,” White advised Dan. “Complete your missions. It isn’t time yet, anyway.”

_Why not?_ Dan had wanted to ask.

But the scene ended, and Dan’s only option was to keep doing what they told him to do. He didn’t know what that meant. He felt wronged, in a way. Dye and White hadn’t directly told him what to do like this before, and for the time being, Dan didn’t think he could trust either of them. They had lied about the Shadow Realm. They had lied about the true mission of the game. And now, they kept being vague, never elaborating on things enough for Dan to understand what he was supposed to be doing or why.

Dye and White are metaphors. They are separate paths to take, when your mental illness worsens or the path for your life is taken out of your control for any other reasons. Maybe White was right at this point of the game. When you are working hard on yourself, you have to be gentle. Even though you may want to rush to the next part, and make everything okay again, it is okay to settle for a middle ground for a while, too.

At this point of the story, though, it seemed as though the story only progressed when Dan went against what they advised him to do. Dan has reflected on that through several play-throughs and come to the conclusion that it means that, at some point, you will have to start relying on your own judgement again. Being mentally ill makes that difficult to do, sometimes. While in the deep of it, there are no logical thoughts. The brain actively lies and the safest thing to do in order to climb back up, is to distrust your own thought and use whatever outside help is available.

The fact is, though, that that isn’t reliable to do in the long run. Life isn’t supposed to be guided by coping techniques or progress, all the time. Despite what Susanne thinks he is ready for, or what other people may expect from him, Dan has to start calling the shots because this is his life. He can’t let his attempt to stay afloat rule it. He has to do what feels right to him, and let go of the second guessing that not trusting your own brain makes you get stuck on.

He has to take control of his own life again. It is strange that that can feel so scary, when in reality, it is what Dan always wishes he could do. That control is what he lost, back when everything in his life came crashing down upon him. It is what he most of all wants to take back. But Dan has waited to feel strong enough. He has waited for something to indicate that he should and could think outside of the box recovery has put him in.

In the game, you are made to start to question your own judgement. Dye and White seem to know so much for so long, and then that changes. Suddenly, you start to question their judgement instead. You don’t get anywhere anymore, completing their quests. Even though Dan didn’t feel exactly sure that it was the right thing to do, he realised that he had to start to think more for himself. 

And so, Dan began to ignore White and Dye’s quests.

Maybe that means that you won’t ever feel completely ready to take control of your life again, but that you have to do it regardless. There is no way to start to trust yourself before you start taking chances, even if they are small. Confidence comes from that, in the end. Not recklessness, but trusting your own opinion, and letting it lead the way again. When your mind is no longer sick, or lying, there is no reason to distrust it.

At this point in his life, Dan thinks that he is ready to take that chance.

-

Dan spends the evening practicing piano. He wants to keep his brain busy, and playing Fall Whisperer or talking with his online friends isn’t enough to do that. His fingers move across the keys as he plays a song he has played so many times over the course of several years that it is almost automatic, now. He is able to play it by relying on muscle memory alone, and because of that he is free to improvise.

The flourish he adds to the melody sounds melancholic. If Dan dared to look inside for long enough to identify his emotions, this is probably the word that he would end up on. It is strange that something that looks so ugly inside him sounds so beautiful as music.

His phone buzzes on the piano, but he waits until the song is over until he looks at the screen.

**Phil** : I’m really sorry. This weekend was a lot.

Dan had almost managed to convince himself that Phil would never text him again. He is so surprised by the message that he doesn’t know how to react. He is happy and he is upset, but most of all he wants everything to be good again. He doesn’t want to pressure Phil so much that he doesn’t answer for almost two days again.

**Dan** : hi

It is all that he can muster, really, at the moment.

**Phil** : I promise I’ll explain everything soon <3

Dan puts the phone down. He expected himself to jump head first back in once Phil had texted him. Right now, he finds that he doesn’t want to do that. As much as Phil means to him, and as much as Dan wants that level of comfort and security with him again, he doesn’t want to pretend like all of this didn’t hurt him. That is something that Dan would have done, at any other point in his life, and it never gave him anything but complicated emotions and buried pain. He doesn’t want that with Phil.

He won’t make mistakes with Phil. 

If Dan dares to trust his own mind again, he knows exactly what that means.

It means that he has to prioritise himself. Because the most frequent mistake that Dan makes in all of his relationships, is that he makes himself and everyone else think that his feelings don’t matter. If Dan buried all of this and jumped back in, that would take away everything that he has with Phil. It would, inexplicably, give Phil permission to keep treating Dan like this. It would take away Dan’s personal progress.

Those aren’t thoughts that he should distrust. Dan can easily recognise them as sound. So he takes this chance, and lets Phil’s message go unanswered for now. Phil will have to try a bit harder than that for Dan to come running. It hurts to think that. It feels like he is punishing Phil, but Dan knows that’s not it. He is doing right by himself. He isn’t used to doing that, and that is why it feels wrong.

Before Dan goes to bed that night, he puts on the green York hoodie. It has been in the wash, so it doesn’t smell like Phil or like Jimmy. It smells Dan.

Right now that feels appropriate. 

He falls asleep with a loud mind, heavy and exhausted. Somewhere inside, though, he knows that this is worth it. He knows that he is doing the right thing. The York hoodie doesn’t belong to Jimmy anymore. It doesn’t even belong to Phil. 

Dan is the one that gets to fall asleep wearing it tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Good Feeling by Violent Femmes


	54. Chapter 54

On Monday morning, Dan wakes up from the sound of the doorbell.

He doesn’t have to think about it. He already knows that it is Dad.

Dad always uses the doorbell. He is not one to be subtle about his presence. He will startle you out of whatever it was that you were doing with a complete disregard for your personal space.

Dan feels like he is only half present in this moment. He gets out of bed and throws the duvet over it haphazardly to make it look somewhat neat. He puts on sweatpants and pulls at the front of the hoodie to get some air. He opens the window a nudge in an attempt to clear out some of the accumulated heat.

His stomach is in knots as he approaches the front door. It is impossible to keep the anxiety at bay. The part of him that is still somewhat present in this moment takes all of the discomfort to heart.

But Dad is not the person standing at his doorstep when he opens the door.

Instead, it is Mum. Her hair is clean and done up in a ponytail. Her coat is long enough to pass her knees, dark blue with white and red squares covering the front. It looks like a good coat. Not at all something they would have been able to afford when Dan was younger.

It probably isn’t something that they are able to afford now, either. But Mum never really cared about that stuff.

She has a plastic bag in one hand and Dan’s emotions in the other.

“Mum, hi,” Dan says, not an inch of surprise in his voice. “Come in.”

He takes her bag and puts it on the floor next to the front door. She walks inside, oddly cheerful as she opens the front of her coat. Dan feels robotic in the way that he listens to her chirpy little greetings and helps her take the coat off and hangs it up on the hook next to his own jacket.

When Mum stops talking, Dan has no clue what to answer because he didn’t take in a single word that was said. She looks up at him, slightly confused, before she opens her arms and Dan steps into them.

She is too small to hold him like she was able to before. They never really took that opportunity much, at the time.

Mum holds on, but Dan steps back, a rush to his heart in an instant. It slams against his chest with so much force that he feels dizzy with it.

“Dan,” Mum says. “Did you hear what I said?”

She closes the front door and takes a look around the place. She hasn’t been here more than once in the two and a half years Dan has lived here.

“Sorry,” Dan replies. “What were you saying?”

“I said, I told Dad that I wanted to go on my own,” she says. “I managed to take the train on my own and everything.”

Dan nods. He doesn’t really feel happy about this progression. It would be sweet to get a surprise visit from your mum if that relationship wasn’t strained. Sometimes, his parents act as if they have the same access to Dan’s life as that of the parents in a non broken family. Where people talk out of desire rather than obligation. Where there is trust and empathy in the place where Dan only finds fear and guilt. Where people can show up unannounced without it feeling like an invasion of privacy.

“Okay,” Dan says.

He usually makes more of an effort. When everything around him falls apart, Dan always has the energy to pretend that everything is fine for his mum’s sake. That was what he was taught to do, growing up. 

_‘No matter what, don’t let Mum know anything bad is happening. Don’t feed her depression. Don’t give her any reason to worry.’_

Because of this, Dan is standing next to a stranger whose affection he craves and fears at the same time.

Mum stands in the middle of Dan’s flat and looks around. The folders of papers on his desk are neatly stacked. The piano beside his bed has been dusted to perfection. His bookcase is filled with books he read years ago and hasn’t touched since. The PC is off, the white walls are void of any art or any pictures of sentimental value. All of his items are black and white and grey; impersonal, replaceable.

“This feels very you,” Mum says with a small smile. “Very nice and organised.”

Dan almost laughs. Those are not descriptors his family has used for him in the past.

“How’d you convince Dad not to come?” Dan asks.

He pulls his desk chair out and motions for Mum to sit. Once she does, he takes a seat on the bed.

“I told him I wanted some alone time with you,” Mum says.

“And he just accepted that?” Dan asks.

Mum is not the one that makes the decisions in their family. Dan isn’t, either. When they get their way, it is because they have somehow convinced Dad that it was his idea. There are no straight forward conversations, only careful manipulation. Someone else wanting something is never enough reason for Dad to agree to it.

Mum shrugs.

“Yeah,” she says. “I don’t think he felt very keen on visiting today, anyway. He gets bad days, too, you know.”

Dan is angry even before she elaborates.

“What you say affects people, you know,” Mum finishes.

There it is.

“Okay,” Dan says.

He has no desire to argue. He has no desire to stand his ground and tell Mum that they never took his feelings into consideration enough for him to feel cared for. Any time they did something for him, it was with a sigh and an eye roll, making it clear that Dan’s needs were never wanted or justified.

Mum regards him with some confused distance. She looks so small and thin in her grey cotton dress, as it hangs shapeless around her frame.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Mum says.

“Uh huh,” Dan says.

He would have felt more motivated to talk to her if she didn’t show up out of nowhere. What he said to Dad applies to her, too. At least Dad had the sense to do as he said, even if it was out of anger.

Mum sighs. “What’s the matter?”

Dan’s heart has stopped pounding. He steels himself to stop the following shakes.

“Nothing,” he says. “Would you like some coffee?”

“I’m good,” Mum says. “I’m sort of done with caffeine for the moment.”

Dan nods. He looks down at Mum’s knees and the tiny rip in her black tights.

“I don’t know what I’ve done,” she says. “I don’t know why you won’t talk to me, Dan. All I want is to be a mother to you and you won’t let me in.”

It sounds rehearsed. A thousand needles prickle inside Dan’s stomach.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters.

“I’m trying my hardest,” she says. “Every day. I know you know what depression is like.”

“So I’m not trying?” Dan asks. “Is that it?”

Mum stays silent. Dan looks up at her face. It is entirely expressionless. Her eyes look like his, brown and almond shaped and void of emotion.

“You want me to try harder?” Dan presses.

Mum stares back at him. Dan could easily back down at this point. But, somewhere inside, a voice asks Dan to right the wrongs that have been done to him. He might not want to do this, but right now, he thinks he has to.

“I want us to be a family,” Mum says.

Dan laughs. It is a choked up, breathy noise that comes all the way from his gut. It sounds pained, even to Dan.

“We are a family,” he says.

Dan will never get another family, regardless of how messy the emotions inside of this one is.

“Well, I want us to be closer,” Mum says.

“Yeah? You never told me that before.”

Mum’s mouth shuts. Dan has to look away.

“I’m trying so fucking hard.”

Dan remembers Rob’s words. They are true. Despite his efforts not being obvious to Mum, they are being made, every day, as Dan still tries to process his emotions regarding everything that happened when Mum was ill.

“I want to be close with you, too,” he says, softening his tone. “I thought I’d be able to after you went to rehab.”

He glances at Mum’s eyes and now they are not void of emotion. They are present, because Mum remains present nowadays, and she doesn’t look like she hates him.

“I couldn’t,” Dan says, as if that isn’t obvious. “It’s hard to be at home. Thinking about what’s happened there still makes me…”

It hurts, physically, to verbalise it.

“It’s stuck in my head,” Dan says. “It makes it hard for me to be around people that remind me of that time.”

Mum takes a wet breath.

“I don’t want to feel this way, but I do,” Dan says. “I want to be able to just talk to you normally but I get--”

He stops. He can’t say everything.

“I never knew that it affected you this much,” Mum says.

Dan looks at her and this time, he doesn’t feel like laughing. He feels like crying, because even after Mum’s rehabilitation and everything that has happened between them, Mum is blissfully oblivious to the fact that Dan is a person. There is not a single person in the world that would take watching a person they care about almost drink themselves to death lightly. There is not a person in the world that would just brush off not having a single sober conversation with one of their parents for years. Mum realises this, but that doesn’t matter, because Dan isn’t a person.

Dad taught him well. Despite always making plenty of room for his own needs and feelings, Dad instilled the idea that Dan’s didn’t. So much so that it was enough for Mum to be convinced Dan doesn’t talk to them because he is simply an ungrateful, lazy brat.

“I talk about it in therapy,” Dan says, voice small.

“Still?” Mum asks.

She looks surprised. No, shocked. She looks like she thinks that the years that went off the rails in both of their lives were just a blip in their lives, a chapter that had a clear ending for everyone involved.

Dan shakes his head and looks down at the floor between his knees. The hopelessness that arrives feels endless in its depth. There is nothing inside of it that is tangible, nothing to hold on to for him not to fall, indefinitely. 

“Daniel,” Mum says.

She gets up and sits down beside him. Dan doesn’t resist when she pushes his head down to her chest and soothes him with gentle strokes over his hair and cheek. Dan’s breath shudders as he wills himself not to cry, listening to her steady heartbeat.

“I’m sorry,” Mum says. “I never knew.”

It feels like a slap in the face. Communication matters, but this feels like something Mum should have fucking _known_ , regardless of whether Dan chose to share or not. Last time he visited, there seemed to have been some progress made.

“Dad said you were okay about everything.”

Dan sits up and rubs his eyes with the back of his hands, shaking his head. The anger is so close to the surface he can’t stop it from spilling out.

“As if I’d tell _Dad_ the truth,” he blurts.

Mum looks so sad.

“Why not?” she asks.

“Because this doesn’t matter to him,” Dan says, willing himself not to raise his voice. “I don’t fucking matter to him.”

“No, you do, Dan,” Mum hurries to say.

“I don’t,” Dan snarls back. “I never did. I don’t get to have feelings, right? If I’m ever anything other than perfectly content I drag the whole family down. That’s what it’s always been like and you know it.”

Mum blinks. There is no stopping it now. Dan has reached his limit. Somehow, the assumption that Mum silently understood the reasons for his absence in her life was some type of comfort. 

That comfort isn’t there anymore. She is just as oblivious to everything as Dad wants her to be, but at the same time, that is not solely Dad’s fault. Mum has free will, despite her problems. She could have taken the opportunity to talk to Dan herself, several times throughout his growing up and after. Instead, she has kept her position on the other side of Dad. She kept using him as a shield, as if Dan could hurt her simply by existing and having feelings. Dan didn’t matter enough to her for her to break out of that herself. She didn’t care enough to try to talk to her own child.

In hindsight, Dan can pity that child. He aches, thinking about the boy that only wanted everyone to love him. It reaches an anger in him now, and a desire to make things right for the person he was before life killed his spirit.

“I never got to talk to you,” Dan says. “Because you were depressed. And I would only make you more depressed, apparently, if I acted like a real son that needs his mum. But then--”

He doesn’t blame Mum for anything, ever. Not in his own mind and not to her, out loud. But she is to blame, for so many things, and the fact that she always gets away with it infuriates Dan. He wasn’t treated fairly. Why should he consider Mum’s feelings so much, if she never tried to consider his?

“-- you never tried to break out of that, did you?” Dan asks. “You let Dad protect you from me like I’m some kind of monster. But I’m not a monster.”

He fucking hates himself for crying. He feels twelve years old, entitled and stupid, blaming his parents for his issues at twenty seven years old. Like his emotional development stopped there.

“You’re not,” Mum says, sounding on the verge of tears as she puts a hand on his knee. “You’re not a monster.”

Dan is going to shatter.

“Why didn’t you ever try?” he practically wheezes out, fighting through the lump in his throat. “Why didn’t you ever talk to me instead of Dad?”

“You weren’t exactly open to me,” Mum says, some defensiveness in her voice. “I could never get through to you. I figured you didn’t want me to.”

Dan has a headache. What child doesn’t want their mum? Even if he didn’t want her to, it was not his choice to make. Mum was the adult in that situation, and she should have taken it into her own hands even if it was difficult. Those are the kinds of decisions that a parent has to make.

“I was a _child_ ,” Dan says, raising his voice without meaning to. “Why were you giving me control of the situation? I had no fucking idea what to do. Dad was the only one that was guiding me, and he told me to stay the fuck away.”

Mum gives him a blank stare. Then she shakes her head to herself, as if shaking off Dan’s words.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “But I was depressed. You know what depression does, Dan. It takes away any idea that you could have a good impact on anyone’s life.”

It is true that Dan knows enough about depression to never truly fault Mum for going through that for most of his life. It still upsets him, though. Her depression still upsets him because it took so much from him. 

But Mum had a choice, too. She chose to let Dan go, and that was not because of her depression. Even through the worst of his mental illness, Dan never cut his family off. They meant everything to him, even when he was in the dark, alone in the cave. Even though they were the cause of much of it, he still cared about them enough to check in on them.

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know what else to say. Finally telling Mum how he truly feels, and allowing himself to be angry at her, is so much that he feels like he can hardly bear it.

“Addiction is a family illness,” Mum says. “It doesn’t affect just one person. I’m not surprised it was hard for you, but I never knew it was still relevant.”

“Yeah,” Dan sighs. “Because you never asked. You just assumed, because Dad moved on. And Adrian moved on. And Nana moved on.”

“Then again, they didn’t see it the way you did,” Mum reasons.

Dan stares at her. His chest goes empty.

“You were there,” Mum says. “You really saw the worst of it. You shouldn’t have had to.”

He never knew that finally having his feelings validated by the person that hurt him would feel so wrong. He takes a breath.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, because nothing feels like it matters right now. “Someone was going to. And Dad was there, too.”

Mum’s lips look thin as she presses them together.

“I didn’t have anything else to do, anyway,” he says.

They are Dad’s words, and for a moment, they are comforting. Dan doesn’t want to feel the hurt anymore. If the only way to do that is by remaining blissfully ignorant, then he will revert back into it. Saying all of these things to Mum makes Dan feel like the monster Dad always made him out to be.

“But if I hadn’t been ill?” Mum asks.

Dan frowns, pulled back into the moment for a second.

“What?” he asks.

“If I hadn’t been ill,” Mum repeats. “What would have happened then?”

It takes Dan a moment to realign his thoughts into a what-if, now that he is stuck on saying what he really thinks. As much as he had a different vision for his life prior to Mum’s descent into addiction and his own depression, he can’t fathom a reality where both of those things aren’t affecting him every day.

“I probably would have gone back to school,” Dan admits. “I probably would have been able to get better much quicker.”

Mum looks heartbroken.

“Really?” she asks.

It hurts. It is the exact thing Dan has been told, time and time again, not to do. To look at Mum and see how badly she is affected by what he said. 

Dan is about to panic, but instead he floats away. His heart, his brain, can’t take more. His glass heart is shattering, within the confines of crystal protection. That is all he has now, those protective people. And right now, an important piece missing.

Dan never imagined that Mum was this ignorant to how much her problems weighed on him. How much responsibility he had to take on for her. How hard that makes it for him to even talk to her, let alone see her now. The fact that, despite Dad’s constant nagging, Mum had a place to do something differently and create her own relationship with Dan, outside of Dad’s control.

Dan buries his face in his hands. Mum moves her hand gently through his hair. It only takes a faint pressure on the side of his head for Dan to lay his head on Mum’s lap and curl in on himself as she strokes his cheek. Faint, faint touches. 

“I’m sorry I came over unannounced,” Mum says. “I want you to trust me again. It probably wasn’t good to do something like this if that’s my goal.”

Comfort lies in protecting Mum at all costs, even if she is the one to blame for the bad. Dan has the impulse to tell her that everything is fine. To smooth things over, make everything better, and undo some of the pain he has caused her today. 

Dan is the one that can handle everything. He is capable of being the bigger person, above emotion and above hurt. Mum is not, or so he thought. As much as Dan wants to pretend like this didn’t happen so they can go back to normal, he is so tired of lying. He is so tired of minimising his own experience for other people. He is so tired of excusing their actions away. So he fights that impulse, and says nothing.

In some ways, it makes him angry that she is taking the right to comfort him. But Dan is too exhausted now. He wants to throw himself headfirst into the dark void at the end of the cave and be consumed by it. 

Mum hasn’t really fought back. That is the only good thing Dan is able to take from this at the moment.

“Do you want me to leave?” Mum asks.

Dan doesn’t open his eyes.

“Yes.”

Mum has a choice to make. She can go, and they will get time to consider things on their own, or just not ever talk about this again. Or she could stay, despite Dan asking her to leave. Dan doesn’t know if that would make him upset that she won’t listen to his wishes, or if it would make him happy because it would show whether she actually cares.

Mum shifts where she is sat and Dan sits up. He looks into her eyes. She looks down at his hoodie, a question in her eyes once she looks back up, but she doesn’t ask. Instead, she gestures at the plastic bag beside the front door.

“I brought something for you,” she says. “I’ll go, but I want you to have it, still.”

Dan is screaming on the inside. _For once in your life, stay and fight for me._ Mum gets up and puts on her coat and shoes. She opens the front door, and shuts it behind herself, without saying a word.

Shakes, and sweating, and trouble breathing. It begins before Dan has time to stave it off and he is in the middle of a dissociative panic attack that leaves him terrified, because everything feels like too much, but doubly, like nothing at the same time. He doesn’t know which end of the spectrum is worse, but he hates both.

He is in the middle of it right now, but amazingly, he remembers one thing that used to calm him down. He hasn’t used that for this in so long, he almost forgot it existed.

Dan reaches out for his phone on the nightstand, gets under the covers, and clicks the YouTube video.

_The Making of Fall Whisperer_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Contagious by Night Riots


	55. Chapter 55

The music and the art is enough for Dan to already feel comforted, but when Seagull starts to speak, Dan’s worries float away for a bit. His voice is deep and the melodic lilt is enough for Dan’s eyelids to start to go heavy. He used this video to fall asleep enough times for him to have developed somewhat of a Pavlovian response to it by now.

That is, until something about Seagull’s voice catches his attention. It sounds so familiar, and at first Dan can’t place how or from where. He might as well just have watched and listened to this video enough times for that to happen.

But that is not it. Dan knows it isn’t. He has heard this voice in real life. He has talked to the person that it belongs to. He is sure of it.

Dan’s hands shake when he grabs his headphones and plug them into his phone. He puts them over his ears and drags the little red time marker back to the very beginning. The video is paused. All Dan has to do is press play, and he will know if what he suspects is true.

Dan presses play, and listens hard.

-

**The Making of Fall Whisperer**

Hi! This is weird, isn't it? You were probably expecting me to be squawking or something. But for this purpose I was able to surgically replace my beak with a human mouth with teeth and a tongue and everything. It feels quite odd, if I'm honest. Seeds really don't taste as good, especially not when Triangle vomits it into my mouth.

... Wow, that's weird. I was told that the beginning of this video was all up to me and I start it like that. I shouldn't be trusted.

Anyway, hello there poor innocent viewer who I just mentally scarred for an undetermined amount of time. I'm Seagull, one of the creators of the game Fall Whisperer! And yes, that is my legal name. Surgically replaced beak, remember?

I am the writer of the story. The art you're seeing on the screen right now is done by TriangleNoses, and the music you're listening to was composed by irregularsymbol. She is responsible for most of the coding within the game as well.

This game was a true team effort. I thought I'd take the opportunity at the one year anniversary of the game's birth to tell the story of how that happened, as that is a common question I get asked. As cool as it would be, I did not give literal birth to it, as that would be a biological impossibility for so many reasons.

When I was just a small baby bird somewhere in England, I had a quite vivid imagination. I spent a lot of time in my head. I wrote stories in my spare time, any chance I got, but they weren't very good.

As I grew up I kept writing stories, but they were never completed. I kind of gave up on the idea of being a proper writer, because it was so much of a stream of consciousness thing to me that I thought it could never be made into something actually good.

This might not seem relevant to Fall Whisperer. Sorry if you're bored, but I hope that Triangle's art and Symbol's music makes up for what my storytelling lacks. This is something I told myself as we were creating the game as well (laugh)

But it is relevant, because as I was writing, two characters kept appearing in my stories. They were always two opposites working together in order to defeat some type of evil. They were early versions of the main characters Dye and White, pretty much.

I met Triangle at university, and he ended up being the first person apart from a very patient teacher I used to have in primary school that I showed my stories to. I remember so many nights when we would ignore whatever party our housemates had going in favour of sitting in our room to talk about the Shadow Realm, and expanding on that idea.

I never thought that, if the story was ever completed, it would be told through a game. I love video games and always have, but it didn't strike me as a possibility. Not until Symbol moved into our uni house and forced us to play her RPG Maker games. They were terrible, if I'm honest. Even worse than the one I made over the summer when I was fourteen and never finished.

Symbol is a talented storyteller, though. It's just that her medium for it is music. Same as Triangle, as his way of telling stories is through his visual artwork. 

I had never had that much genuine support on my own creative outlet before this, but it changed everything. Not only did it change my goals as to how my stories could be told, but it motivated me to want to finish what I was making. I remember one birthday, when one of Triangle's gifts for me was an extremely detailed drawing of Dye and White in the garden. Seeing characters that I had created being made into an actual thing was thrilling! I can't even describe the feeling, but I still get it whenever one of you send me art that you've made. 

After uni, we sort of put away all of this in favour of, you know, surviving. We had odd jobs and we were pretty aimless in life, but Symbol was at least starting to work on games. It wasn't until a couple of years later until we actually got back to it. We were broke and we had no idea what we wanted to do with our lives. I think that was as big a motivation as any to take a risk.

As always, Triangle was the one to suggest we work together again. It took quite a bit of convincing, as life after university is bound to kill your spirits a bit, but I was too excited by the very small possibility of putting something creative out into the world and seeing if it could become something that other people wanted to take part of. It was all too enticing for me to not be convinced. We had everything to lose by doing this, as we put all of our efforts and money into it. It was nerve wracking, to not know whether we were actively ruining our own lives or not, all while knowing the odds were against us.

It took a while, as we still had to have jobs and life keeps you busy, but we were so motivated to change the direction our lives were going in that Fall Whisperer took up a lot of our time, anyway. I’d call it a result of early twenties naivety and energy, but after all these years, storytelling and seeing it actually turn into something gives me that same thrill. Adding the response from players, it is definitely the best thing in my life.

After a lot of showing early versions of the art and storyline and general game mechanics to various independent game companies, we landed on the one that Symbol’s brother was starting up himself. We had been told no so many times that it barely affected us anymore, and we were determined to make this thing. It was probably crazy, a lot of people in our lives told us so, but even if it hadn’t become what it is now it was worth it, in my opinion. We were going after our dreams and I will never regret doing that, even if it doesn’t always turn out exactly like you want it.

It wasn’t until after we were starting to make real progress into making the game into an actual thing, where we went from concept art to actual proper gameplay and dialogue, that everything suddenly changed. Something happened in my personal life that affected me greatly, and that on top of how hard I was working to make this game, and working my regular job at the same time, as well as barely hanging on financially caused me to reconsider everything.

My brain wasn’t working properly at this time. I was feeling crushed by all the responsibilities I’d taken on, and receiving the news that I did at this time was the push that it took for my brain to force me to take a break. This is personal, and it may not seem relevant, but as much as I like to keep things private online I can’t not mention this as it had a great effect on the story we were telling.

I wouldn’t say that it was aimless, before this. It still had so many of the concepts it has, and it had the same sort of themes, but something was still lacking. I feel like I had all the pieces of the puzzle in front of me, but it didn’t create a full picture. The edges were all done but I was confused as to how to really make the inside into something meaningful.

While I was ill, I had a lot of time on my hands. I couldn’t work, and we all put the game on hold. Triangle and Symbol were still making the things that needed to be finished, but unbeknownst to them, I was working on the story at the same time. I know I was supposed to be resting, but writing this story became a crucial part of me getting better.

I feel like I somehow unlocked the true meaning of this story. Once I started to write all of the intricacies and figure out the true meaning of all of these events, there was no way of stopping. In a way, the story began to write itself. It felt as though this story suddenly had a life on its own, unaffected by me. Everything became so clear to me, that all I could really do was to put the words on the page.

I don’t feel grateful for what I went through, as it was the hardest thing I have ever dealt with personally. If I could have it not happen, I would. This story became an anchor for me, though. And after everything, from the slow start of the game’s initial release, to the sudden influx of new players and attention from the gaming community, it has become that for other people, as well. 

When I presented all of these new ideas to Triangle and Symbol, I was sure they would tell me I was crazy. I was sure that it must be bad. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Triangle and Symbol were thrilled with what I had come up with, and encouraged me to add these new details to every part of the game. Their input helped to make it even better, and I owe so much of this story’s impact to them. It would not be what it is without them, and I’m not saying that to be humble.

The strangest part of all of this, to me, wasn’t the fact that what we had created actually had players. The strangest thing about it wasn’t even the fact that we were actually making money off it, finally. No, the thing that I still have a hard time wrapping my head around, is that people understood it. Players from all over the world saw all of these little messages and took them to heart.

All of that pain and stress had made me believe that no one else felt like I did, about these things. But so many of you do. So many of you tell me all of these stories about how the game has changed your lives that, despite my inability to fully take it in, I no longer feel alone. That is, I think, what this story was always meant to be about in the end. There are people that will be there for you, and there are things that you can do to improve your own life, and you are never alone.

Well, that got deep, didn’t it? I promise I will go back to squawking on Twitter like I normally do, but as much as I want to make jokes I am also so incredibly grateful for all of you. Thank you. This game wouldn’t be what it is without you all, and the community you have created because of it means everything to me.

So, I guess this is what I had to say for now! In the future I might just talk more about the things that made all of this possible, but I should leave that to Symbol as she is the real hero of that story.

Thank you for watching! Bye!

-

Dan rewatches it twice. He gets stuck on certain words, said in a specific tone of voice, and replays them time after time to try to convince himself that the idea that has come up in his head isn’t true. He wants to convince himself that he has gone mad, because that would make more sense than the realisation he is slowly coming to. He can hardly allow himself to think the thought. Instead, all of it floats around like intangible, impossible pieces of information that make too much sense when they are put together for Dan to try to ignore them.

Seagull’s identity has always been hidden. So has Symbol’s and Triangle’s. The three of them made a point of not sharing who they were, and Dan has always respected it. There have been several threads on the forums and on Twitter where people claim to have figured out who they really are, and Dan was always the first person to report them. He respects and understands their decisions not to share who they are. Triangle explained it during a Reddit Q&A once. He said that all of them want to feel capable of being free in their creative expression, and so hide behind aliases in order to ensure that their storytelling won’t be swayed by the possibility of anyone knowing who they really are. They aren’t after fame. All they want to do is to tell stories, and to do so with as much authenticity as possible.

Dan never shared his identity on the forums. The group chat knows his name and his face, because they are his friends. He isn’t scared that they will tell others who he is, or that they will judge him in any way. He is safe with them. The rest of the internet is not as safe. It is endless, and anything you post will be there forever no matter if you delete the post or your account. Dan feels that same need to be able to express himself without the possibility of someone from his real life knowing that it’s him, or that anyone on the forums will find his personal information.

This is all good and well. Dan never expected to figure out who the creators are, and though he has been curious, he is okay with that. He knew a few details about them, like Seagull’s black quiff, and Triangle’s round glasses, and Symbol’s red hair. He knows they are from England, because you can tell from Seagull’s accent, and Symbol’s brother’s company is based in London. 

Dan has been aware that they could be around him at any moment. On the tube, or in town, and he would be none the wiser.

It never struck him that any of them could know one of his friends. It never struck him that any of them could come to his work. It never struck him that any of them could befriend him, and be in his life, without Dan having a clue.

All of that could make sense, though. Those things happen, surely. They must have met people that were fans of the game before, and not told them who they are until later on. That is a thing that happens.

What is absolutely insane to Dan is not that he has had a conversation with Seagull in real life. It isn't weird that his kind-of-ex went to university with him. That seems plausible enough.

It is insane, though, that Dan has kissed him. It is insane that Dan has had sex with him. It is insane that Dan has shared some of the most personal details of his life with the person that created the game that saved him when he was suicidal. And he didn’t even know it was him. 

Dan has a deep, unexplainable connection to this person. This person pulled him up out of the deepest depths and made sure he knew that he isn’t a monster, or a bad person, or someone that has to say sorry for everything. He is the one person in Dan’s life that has made him feel truly understood, and truly safe.

It can’t be true, but it is true. Dan replays parts of the video until he can’t stand listening to it anymore. He knows that voice. He knows what it sounds like when its owner is happy, and sad, and angry, and horny.

Dan has run his fingers through that black quiff, so many times.

There is no mistaking it. Dan knows who Seagull is. He has figured out what Phil does for work.

Because Seagull and Phil are the same person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: The Only Moment We Were Alone by Explosions In The Sky
> 
> [ **happy six months of monochrome <33** ](https://intoapuddle.tumblr.com/post/189723121133/happy-six-months)


	56. Chapter 56

There is so much that Dan doesn't understand. There is so much that he couldn't possibly understand.

When they met, Phil had no clue that Dan had even played Fall Whisperer. He didn't know if Dan knew that the game existed at all. Dan does understand his apprehension about telling him about it at that time, though. Dan wasn't a sure thing. Neither one of them knew whether their friendship would last. As he has been so adamant about keeping his identity secret, it is understandable that Phil wouldn't tell just any person what he does for a job.

But then their friendship deepened. It turned into romance. No, more than romance. What developed between the two of them was a connection that surpasses simple descriptors like those. What Dan fails to understand now, is why Phil didn't tell him at that point.

It is the only thing that, before Phil stopped responding to texts, Dan saw as a warning sign. The secrecy around his job didn’t bother or worry him, per se, but Dan did question it. It seemed so out of character for Phil to want to keep one part of his life so closed up, especially when him and Dan were so close.

Thinking back, Phil did find out that Dan has played the game when he found the amethyst in his bed. A piece of merchandise doesn't make you a fan, though. He still could have told him without a fear of their relationship changing.

That is what Dan assumes, at this point. He doesn’t think that Phil would be scared that Dan would tell the world who is behind those online personas. Dan thinks that Phil’s fear is that, if he did tell Dan the truth, they would no longer be on the same level. Even if Dan wasn’t a big fan, it could still alter that dynamic between them. 

And now, after their conversation Friday night, Phil knows exactly how much Fall Whisperer means to him.

That must be why he took a step back.

Dan takes a breath. His room is dark. The plastic bag Mum left behind is still beside the front door. He is under the covers in the green York hoodie, his phone lying on his chest, still wearing his headphones.

This is not real. It can’t be real. It is too fucking weird.

Dan is about to go insane, so he takes his phone and he calls Jimmy’s number without thinking much of it. He needs to talk to someone that knows Phil. He needs to talk to someone that actually knows what Phil does for a living. He wants Jimmy to tell him that he is insane, and that Phil works with something completely different. He wants the impossible to be even more impossible; that there is a person out there with a voice that sounds exactly like Phil’s, who also has a black quiff for a hairstyle, and who was struggling sometime around their mid twenties.

At this point, that is plausible. Because the things that Dan are thinking now were impossible, only half an hour ago. They were so impossible that he never made the connection between their voices before, even if he doesn’t think he has watched the video since he met Phil.

“Hello?” Jimmy says.

He sounds sleepy. Dan checks the time. It is ten am already, and Jimmy has a regular job. He doesn’t typically sleep at this time on a Monday.

“Hi,” Dan says. “Did I wake you?”

His own voice sounds too normal. He doesn’t at all sound like he just realised that his romantic interest is the same person whose game he has been playing for years, and whose tweets he has been replying to and deciphering with his friends.

“Yeah,” Jimmy says. “‘S fine, though. What’s up?”

In the middle of all this weirdness, hearing Jimmy talk to him like this feels good. There are no guards up, like there had been before they talked things out.

“Um,” Dan says.

This is not something he has figured out, per se. He doesn’t even know how to ask.

This is Jimmy, though. He may be Phil’s friend, but he is Dan’s friend, too. They know each other.

“Do you know Phil’s job?” Dan ends up asking.

Jimmy goes quiet for a moment.

“... Yeah?” he says.

“Okay,” Dan breathes out. “What is it?”

Jimmy takes another pause. This is a weird thing to spring on someone that just woke up. Dan has no time to wrap things up in a neat little bow right now, though. He just wants an answer. He wants to be told that he is crazy, because how the fuck could Phil be some kind of famous writer without anyone ever having mentioned it to Dan before?

“I was told not to tell you that,” Jimmy chuckles.

That does not make Dan feel better.

“Just tell me,” he says.

“You’re being weird.”

“I know that,” Dan snaps back. “Can you just tell me, please?”

“What is going on?” Jimmy asks with an exasperated sigh.

Dan hears someone talking in the background.

“No, it’s fine,” Jimmy says to the unidentified voice. “It’s just Dan. Go back to sleep.”

The voice says something else. This time Dan hears what they say, and who says it.

“Tell Dan to fuck off,” is what Chris groans.

“Chris says to tell you to fuck off,” Jimmy reiterates with a soft chuckle.

“Yeah, I got that,” Dan says with an eye roll.

He can take banter at any other time, but right now his mind is stuck on one thing and one thing only.

“Are you going to tell me?” Dan presses.

“Dan,” Jimmy sighs. “What is this? It feels weird to tell you when he specifically told me not to.”

“Why?” Dan urges. “Is it something bad?”

He acts delusional for now, because at least he has something to fall back on if he ends up embarrassing himself. It is weird that Phil won’t tell him about his job. That is something that most people would agree on.

“No?” Jimmy says, or asks. “He tells me not to tell some people. It’s fine.”

Dan frowns. 

“Why me, though?”

Phil could have told them all that it was okay to tell Dan at any point, after they became involved. But if there is another reason why he hasn’t told him than the fact that Dan is a fan, then, Dan has no idea what that would be.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy says. “It’s something he said when you first got to know each other. It’s not like we talk about that every day.”

“Well,” Dan says, “I deserve to know now, don’t I?”

“Why are you asking me?” Jimmy says. “You’re just putting me in a weird position now. Ask Phil if it bothers you so much.”

Yeah. Dan can’t really argue with that logic. That is what he would have done in any other situation.

“I don’t want to,” is Dan’s small and childish response. “I can’t right now.”

“Why not?” Jimmy asks.

Dan sighs.

“I just---”

He still feels fragile after the conversation with Mum. It was a lot. He is already emotionally drained. Going to the one thing he thought could comfort him and instead having his whole life flipped on its head is just making him that much more stressed out.

“I feel like I’m going crazy,” Dan admits, heart in his throat. “Alright? I think I know what it is and I just need someone to tell me I’m wrong.”

“Okay,” Jimmy says in an odd voice. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“Just tell me what it is he does,” Dan says.

“Tell me what you think it is first, then,” Jimmy says. “So I can tell you you’re wrong.”

“No. Please? Just tell me like, the small gist of it. You don’t have to be specific.”

“He’s a writer,” Jimmy says.

“I know that,” Dan hisses. “I meant, what kind of writer? Novels? Screenplays?”

Jimmy pauses.

“No,” he says then, and Dan’s stomach drops. He knows what Jimmy is going to say before he even says it. “He’s--- he writes games. Video games, I mean, not like the board game he made up that one night.”

This confirms it, and yet Dan wishes Jimmy would specify. He wishes he would give him a title and have it be anything other than Fall Whisperer. 

He doesn’t need to. Dan knows enough now to know that his suspicions are correct. He knew that even before he called Jimmy. He just wishes that this was a case of temporary delusion, one in which Dan accidentally misheard for some reason. That is not the case, though. Dan knows Phil’s voice.

“Dan?” Jimmy asks when Dan doesn’t say anything.

“Fuck,” Dan answers.

“Fuck?” Jimmy echoes. “What--”

Dan could sink and sink and sink through the mattress.

Phil started to push Dan away right after they talked about Fall Whisperer. As Dan thinks back, he remembers that Phil even had a panic attack not long after that conversation. His chest hurts as he struggles to breathe in, when that thought hits him. Phil panicked, not because his job was stressing him out, but because Dan is a fan of the game he made. No, not a fan. Someone who depended on that game during the worst moments of his life. That is so much more intense, and so fucking weird.

Phil is pushing Dan away because he can’t be with someone who idolises his work. That must be it. For a moment Dan is, somehow, happy to know the reason why Phil has been acting so distant for the past few days.

Then that happiness leaves the moment he really thinks about it. No matter the reason, the consequences still stand.

Phil doesn’t want to be with Dan anymore. He has good reason not to.

Dan starts shaking.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

“What’s going on?” Jimmy asks, and Dan is startled enough by the sound of his voice to be able to listen. “Did something happen? Dan.”

“No,” Dan says, and now his voice sounds exactly as fucked up as one would expect it to be after finding something like this out. “No, I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine,” Jimmy says.

“Okay,” Dan says. “I feel fucking crazy right now.”

“Why?” Jimmy asks. “Did you find out he’s kind of famous? Because that doesn’t really affect him. People don’t know who he is, really, he doesn’t share his name or his appearance or anything. You don’t have to worry.”

“Yeah,” Dan says, sounding just as shallow as he feels.

Phil doesn’t want to be with him.

“You should talk to Phil,” Jimmy says, clearly uncomfortable. “I probably told you too much. I’m sure you’ll work out whatever this is, though, right? It’s like we said. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.”

Tears roll down Dan’s cheeks. This is beyond ‘not easy’. This is the last thing Dan would expect to happen in a million years, but right now he doesn’t give a fuck about how weird it is to somehow try to picture Phil and Seagull as the same person in his head. He doesn’t give a fuck about Fall Whisperer or what effect it has had on him. He gives a fuck about Phil, and keeping him in his life, because he needs him. Even if all of this is weird, and awkward, and impossible, it doesn’t fucking matter. Dan needs Phil, and Phil clearly doesn’t want Dan.

“Okay,” Dan says, because he just wants the conversation to end right now. “Sure. Sorry I woke you up.”

“Are you okay?” Jimmy asks.

“Yeah,” Dan says. “I’m just… I’ll talk to him, yeah? I have to go now.”

“Hang on,” Jimmy says. “Dan.”

“Yeah?”

“He really, really likes you. You know that, right? He won’t stop talking about you.”

Dan covers his face with one hand in an attempt to physically push in the pained, sad noises that are about to come out of him.

If he tries to speak now, his voice will sound as sad as he feels. He doesn’t want Jimmy to know that he is sad, right now.

“Bye,” is what Dan musters, said quickly enough for the emotion not to appear in his voice.

He hangs up, and texts Jimmy a half assed explanation about someone being at his door as reason why he hung up on him like that.

Phil and Seagull are the same person. That is a thing, right now.

Dan has actually talked to Seagull. No, he has done so much more with Seagull. It doesn’t feel real, when Dan tries to think of it like that. In his mind, Seagull is something so different. But at the same time, if he imagined anyone in his life being him, Phil would be the one he landed on. Phil is just as quirky, and nerdy, and adorable as Seagull is. They both stand as pillars of safety and comfort in Dan’s life, even though Seagull is more so that through the game he created than the person that he is.

It makes so much sense, and it makes no sense at all.

-

The day has only just started, but Dan wants to stay in bed. He wants to wake up again, to a world where his mum isn’t knocking on his door and where he is still blissfully ignorant about the fact that Phil isn’t who he thought he was.

If Dan stops catastrophizing, he can imagine a different scenario regarding what Phil is doing and why. Maybe, just maybe, he could be trying to get back to Dan in a way that feels comfortable to him. The last thing Phil texted him was a promise that he was going to ‘explain everything soon’. That doesn’t sound like he is trying to push Dan away. That sounds like someone that is deliberating something, and wants to talk about whatever needs to be talked about after giving it the proper amount of thought. In that light, it sounds like he really cares about this. It sounds like he cares enough about his relationship with Dan to want to do that.

It could be that Phil wants to tell Dan what his job is. He could just be figuring out how to break that to him, in a way that is most comfortable to them both, because he wants it to work. Maybe he even feels guilty about keeping it from him. And if that is the case, Dan finding this out on his own completely takes that away from Phil. He doesn’t get to tell Dan on his own terms. He doesn’t get to say it in that way that he says things, that makes it feel like everything is going to be okay.

It isn’t that Dan is unhappy about this for being the way it is. He isn’t unhappy that Phil is Seagull. It is unbelievable, yes, but what feels wrong about it is more so the possible outcomes of it. Even if Phil is trying to find a way to make it work out, could it? Dan doesn’t know how he will feel the next time that they talk. 

Talk. Dan hasn’t just talked to Phil. He has talked to Seagull, in DMs, where Phil didn’t know that he was talking to Dan and Dan didn’t know that he was talking to Phil.

Dan gets out of bed. He takes off the York hoodie, and the soft jogging bottoms, and the pants underneath. They fall to the floor behind him as he walks the short distance to the bathroom right next to the hallway that isn’t really a hallway because there are no walls enclosing it, and stops right as he enters.

For some reason, Dan is very aware that there is a mirror right next to himself, and that he isn’t currently looking into it. He is scared of what he will see once he turns his head. 

It doesn’t make sense. His appearance hasn’t changed just because of a strange turn of events. It hasn’t changed because he finally stood up to his mum. He can feel the sting of regret about that already, even though he did the right thing. That sting was planted by his father years and years ago, and it is going to take more than one instance of going against it for it to go away.

Dan doesn’t want to give into made up fears anymore. He turns and he looks, and the person that looks back is just what he expects. It’s just him, pale skin, bare shoulders, and flat bed head curls that are not flattering. It is dark under eye circles that don’t exactly bother him and chapped lips. As long as Dan thinks about his appearance in these factual terms, his mirror image won’t cause him to panic.

That is what he is afraid of. Looking in the mirror is a scary thing to do because it can trigger dissociation. That realisation alone is trigger enough.

Dan shuts his eyes hard and bites his bottom lip as his heart starts pounding. He takes a deep breath, opens his eyes back up, and goes to stand beneath the shower as he turns the water on. The water takes a while to heat up, but Dan is standing underneath the ice cold stream for a purpose. He is breathing hard, the cold feels almost painful. As the water goes warm, he relaxes. This morning has been everything out of the ordinary and Dan is going to do everything in his power to stop himself from mentally checking out from it. He doesn’t want to do that anymore.

If that means he will have to startle himself by covering himself in ice cold water as he lets out a high pitched yelp that sounds so pathetic that he has to laugh, then that is what it means. Dan stands beneath the water and lets himself become soaked. He focuses on his breath and on the piece of cracked tile beneath one of his feet.

Another thought manages to slip into his consciousness despite these attempts. It reminds him of how Phil said he needs to change the shower head, because the stream was too harsh. Phil said that to distract Dan’s mind from spinning out of control, and it kind of worked. But him doing that then is taking away from Dan distracting himself now.

Retrospect is a funny thing.

Things are changing, but Dan has already changed. He can trust himself to make the right decision about this situation too, just like he did with Mum. He didn’t feel ready to stand up to her, but once he did it, he realised that he had been ready all along.

Dan’s mind wanders and it fills with purple. It is a comforting thought for a moment, until he realises who it reminds him of, and why. Dan already told Phil he reminds him of the amethyst. What that felt like for Phil to hear, Dan can’t even begin to imagine.

The time for distracting himself away from toxic coping mechanism may have been short, but it was there. This is what Dan tells himself after he washes off and sits on his bed and takes his meds as he waits for his coffee to brew. His brain is going crazy turning everything over in his head again, but he allows himself to be partly removed from it. Somewhere inside, the seed he planted so long ago has started to grow large enough for it to be visible to himself. There is a strength inside him, and though it looks new to him it could have been there for a long time already. Dan takes comfort in it, while his mind goes to every terrible outcome he can imagine. It isn’t completely effective but it is something.

On his night stand, Dan’s phone buzzes. The notification reads ‘Seagull’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: THE QUIET by Troye Sivan


	57. Chapter 57

Seagull, or Phil’s, reply was just a simple “LOL” with a laughing emoji next to it. Looking at the picture Dan sent him just the other day feels strange now. He can’t respond now.

Staring at the screen for those minutes, trying to wrap his head around the exchange which would have seemed so natural just a couple hours ago, causes Dan to spend the rest of his day scrolling. He reads through their entire conversation, while trying to picture the person he was talking to as being Phil. For some reason, he finds it hard to do that. He wasn’t exactly picturing anyone while he was chatting to Seagull. All he had to go on was a voice, a username, and a seagull with a black quiff for a profile picture. Mostly, Seagull was a concept more than a person. This all-knowing deity who had transcended mere personhood and somehow understood everything. That is what playing Fall Whisperer feels like to Dan, after all. As if the person that made it truly just knows, and thinks, and takes all of the things that had been bouncing around in Dan’s head and made it into something comprehensible.

Phil seems to have come far in his own mental health journey. He lets emotions pass through him and he is able to control situations. He exudes security. He has so much compassion, for Dan at least, that Dan almost can’t handle it. Despite all of these high opinions Dan has of Phil, and despite just how in love Dan is with Phil, it is strange to think of him as the person behind all of these concepts and metaphors in Fall Whisperer.

Phil is a whimsical, quirky character to the untrained eye, but there is more to him than that. Dan has gone below the surface, he did so the very first time they met, but there is still more to be explored. After Saturday, Dan realised that Phil puts walls up around Dan, too. When he grabbed Dan’s wrist in a desperate attempt to not have Dan leave in a bad mood, there was something in his eyes that was very new to Dan. There are layers and layers of Phil, and thinking about that, Dan can’t help but feel mildly deceived. Everything Seagull and Fall Whisperer aside, Phil isn’t exactly the person that Dan thought he was.

Phil has a lot of faces. That is the thing. Of course he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy that would sit down and have a long hard think about his mental health and then put all of those deliberations into metaphor. Of course he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy that would ask to be told what to do in bed. Of course he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy that would be the leader of his friend group. They are all different faces, each one as contradictory as the next.

One of the words that Dan thought of when he saw Phil for the first time was ‘contrasts’. 

Phil had a smile that asked not to be looked at, while his clothing style was begging for attention. His hands were nervous, but his eyes were calm. The more Dan has gotten to know him, the more contrasts have appeared. Dan has thought this before; Phil is so many things. He is warm, but he can be cold, too. He can seem to have very strong morals, and then have a completely different set of principles when it comes to something else. These are all things that Dan has already noticed. If he were to imagine Seagull as being any kind of person, it would be a person like that.

Because Seagull wrote this game that is painfully genuine and revealing. It completely tears the mask off all of these emotions and coping mechanisms that people use and go through, leaving the player with a feeling of nakedness when they are shown as what they are. At the same time, Seagull is so incredibly private online. He hardly ever tweets anything other than “Squawk”, and those tweets are only to indicate that something is about to happen. If Dan had nothing, not even the Twitter account, to go on in terms of imagining what the creator of Fall Whisperer could be like, he wouldn’t imagine someone posing as a squawking seagull making bad puns on Twitter, being a right troll every other time he communicates with his fans. 

As Dan scrolls down Seagull’s Twitter timeline, he stops at the first exchange he had with Seagull, months ago. Dan opens the thread and feels something like that excitement stir, still, like it did when it happened.

**Seagull** : The community on the FW forums is so fun! I’d create a fake account to be part of it if I weren’t a seagull.

**achromatic_bot** : @Seagull you’re not ready for the cold hard depths of it yet keep your brilliant mind pure please it will only put up the next title

**Seagull** : @achromatic_bot If you only knew what these eyes have seen. Good thing I’m skilled at compartmentalisation!

In some ways, it is hilarious just how much that very first exchange revealed some of the things that Dan is thinking about right now. He subjected Seagull to the assumption that he is innocent, and Seagull replied by challenging that notion. That is what Seagull and Phil do at every other turn; they challenge people’s perception of them. 

Every person is contradictory and complex in their own right. What makes it so apparent in Seagull and Phil, to Dan, is that they are so _much_ of everything that they are. Then again, it could be that Dan pays more attention to them than he does to other people. Of course they are so much of everything they are to Dan, because in their own separate ways, they are everything to Dan.

Except, these impacts aren’t separate. They are mixed, because they belong to the same person. Dan is not going to get used to that concept any time soon.

In some ways, Dan still doesn’t believe it. His day is completely out the window, now. He spends it in a dreamy state, listening to the video and reading Seagull’s tweets and the few forum posts he has made and tries to make the connection in his brain. Dan removes himself from the feeling of it and instead focuses on the intrigue. If he goes near the thoughts he had while he was talking to Jimmy, he won’t know how to handle anything.

Come to think of that, Dan has some explaining to do. He gets his phone and types a message to Jimmy.

**Dan** : about what we talked about earlier can you not tell phil? or any of the guys?

The response doesn’t come until the evening, when Dan is in bed distracting himself by talking in DMs with Morgan about everything other than what is truly on his mind.

**Jimmy** : I wouldn’t

**Jimmy** : You don’t want me to ask about it, do you?

Dan feels a sting of anxiety. Jimmy knows him too well. This isn’t an issue that Dan can go on ignoring and he knows it. He feels safe, keeping it in a separate part of his brain, in a place where he can store other things that aren’t true and can’t be real. That is how he will have to cope with this information until he finds out anything else.

If he does allow Jimmy to know what is going on, would it make things worse? Should Dan wait until Phil tells him, or should he confront him about it?

It hurts his stomach now, letting all of that linger inside his mind. Dan is absolutely not ready to talk about this to anyone.

**Dan** : not yet but ty i appreciate that you care

The response comes quickly.

**Jimmy** : Of course <33

It feels good to know that they are on good terms. Dan even allows himself to feel proud about the fact that he is actually communicating, even if he isn’t being explicit. He sends a heart emoji in return, locks his phone, and tries to fall asleep for the night.

-

When the player starts to do things without the help of Dye and White, Dye’s denial only seems to grow.

White seems to be unaware of its severity. Despite him knowing that it is going on, he does nothing to stop it from happening. At the time, Dan had characterised White as always confrontational. He knew by now that there was a softer side to him, and that there was an edge to Dye, but he still saw them as one track characters. Two halves of one whole. 

The player is encouraged to move forward by the progression that they make rather than what anyone tells them to do. If they explore the caves, the amber starts to switch around again. The crystals that they find are stronger than the ones they had found before, and so their use when added to armour and weapons and tools is that much more effective. The force field that Dye placed on the darkness was completely unaffected by any attempts Dan tried, though, regardless of how powerful his weapon was. It simply wouldn’t budge. Not from arrows, not from swords.

Eventually, Dan figured that violence and force was not the solution to this. On a complete chance attempt, he selected a quartz in his inventory and right clicked the darkness.

The screen started to shake, and the crystal that was placed there phased away. A dialogue box appeared. There was no name or portrait to indicate who may be speaking, but the font looked different to the one that had been used consistently throughout the game. The text was small, and squiggly, but Dan could make out the strangely ominous word.

_Thank you._

The screen stopped shaking and everything returned to normal. Dan felt suddenly uncomfortable, and unsure. He was doing the right thing, but being alone in the bottom of a cave receiving a message like that was downright creepy. Dan pulled out his best sword as he waited for something else to happen.

Nothing did. Eventually, the regular cave music and ambient sounds came back. Dan didn’t want to leave, though. He took another random crystal that was in his inventory, the citrine. He doesn’t use this crystal much, but it is important. It serves as protection, but not like the amethyst does. It instead takes away darkness as a temporary measure. You will have to activate a new one in order for it to start again, and so, Dan has chosen to try to collect as many as he can if he for some reason runs out of amethysts.

The same thing happens when Dan places the citrine on top of the darkness. Shaking screen, silence, and the ominous message. There was one slight difference, though, one that Dan hardly noticed, but once he did, he realised that he was doing things correctly.

The font was just the slightest bit larger.

Dan felt a rush. He was figuring it out on his own. Surely he would just have to offer rarer, more valuable gems and then the darkness would be open to him once again. Maybe it wouldn’t even be as dark. The game was encouraging him to go by his own instinct, and do things on his own, so he could probably pass without Dye and White once he got there.

Dan left the cave. He was almost out of crystals and it was getting late in-game. When he arrived at Dye’s cabin, though, there was no one around. At this time of day, Dye was always in bed. Sometimes, White was even sleeping on the sofa. Dan searched through the entire house for clues, but there weren’t any. When he tried to interact with his own bed, he was not able to go to sleep.

The garden was just as empty as the cabin had been. Dan walked to the locomotive, just to see if they were there instead, for some reason. No such luck. It was open for him to walk inside, but he couldn’t go to sleep in the bed like he sometimes did when White wasn’t sleeping here. It worked out well when he was doing a lot in the caves, as it was close to one of the openings. But the locomotive was empty and so was the surrounding forest.

Eventually, Dan remembered the start of the game. The house that he started in, which he had been to less and less as the story progressed. Even if Dye and White were gone for now, Dan must be able to at least sleep there to make the night pass.

It was a far walk from the railway to the house. Dan hardly remembered the way there. The forest was so big and the stars in the sky did not provide much in terms of lighting his road. Eventually, Dan crafted a torch using a stick and a ruby. Dan felt himself relax through his journey, when some comforting background music started to play. The melody of the track wasn’t new, but this seemed to be an alternate version. It was slower, with less instruments backing up the acoustic guitar that lead the melody.

Dan trudged forward and eventually, he was at his own house. It felt strange to look at it now. It reminded him of the beginning of the game, when he spent a few in-game days working out the mechanics of the game. Seed collecting and fishing, all intercepted by the occasional nightmare and intrusive thought, until it became more than occasional and he was instructed to look for answers in either the cave or the garden. The game had not at all turned out the way that he had expected it to. There was so much more depth and intrigue than Dan had initially expected. The hype surrounding the game had talked about how addictive it was, but Dan hadn’t known in what way. He hadn’t thought it was to do with personal growth. He hadn’t expected to be helped by the story in any way shape or form.

The song changed, and at first Dan didn’t recognise it, until he realised where he had heard it. At the start of the game. It had not played again until now. Spurred on by what he viewed as progress, he entered the house.

It looked pretty much like Dan remembered, except for one detail. The wardrobe. It didn’t look different, but all the lights in the house were out except for the one above it. Dan approached it, right clicked it, and was given the option to change his appearance.

At first, he played around with different looks. The all black clothing he had picked out at the start was so familiar to him now that everything else looked wrong. But, knowing this game, there was a purpose to this. It wouldn’t indicate he should change his clothes unless there was a reason for it.

Dan remembered then, that Dye and White’s shadows wore the same clothing as the real Dye and White. This seemed like too simple of a solution. Matching his shadow was surely not as easy as simply changing his clothes to whatever his shadow had worn.

It couldn’t hurt to try, though.

His memory of his shadow was fuzzy now. It hadn’t been that long since he saw it, but he had been too caught up in the story and everything that was happening at the time to fully take in the details. After a long hard think and trying on different styles, Dan settled on the default outfit. A white t-shirt and blue jeans. When Dan thought about it, he could imagine that those were colours his shadow self had worn.

Dan exited out of the closet menu. For a moment, nothing happened. The music was not playing, and it was strangely quiet. It wasn’t until Dan approached the bed and clicked it to sleep that the screen started shaking with a loud rumble.

Once the shaking and the rumbling stopped, all of the lights in the house were turned on. Dan wasn’t alone, now.

Right behind his sprite stood a character. It was in all black attire, and their hair was the same colour and style as Dan’s had now. When Dan moved his character, he almost expected the one that was wearing black to move. It did not. Dan had no choice to move in any direction than to turn back and face the character that was now standing behind him.

“We keep passing each other,” it said.

It clicked for Dan at that moment. This was his shadow. It had gone the same route as himself; changing clothes in order to match. Options for dialogue appeared at that.

>How did you get here?  
>Who are you?  
>Get out of my house!

A spooky noise began to play. Dan recognised it. It was the same noise that would play at the beginning of the game, when the shadow began to haunt him and alter his thoughts.

Dan clicked the first option. He had already realised who it was, and he had no interest in making it go away.

“This is my house,” his shadow self said.

Dan didn’t understand.

“This is where we had most contact, yeah?” his shadow clarified. “Seems like the connection isn’t as distorted now.”

For a moment, Dan wondered what would have happened if he had gone back to his house sooner. Would he have had more one on one time with his own shadow? The shadows that had been plaguing him in the cave hadn’t been his own, he realised now. They only let out wordless cries until Dan shot them with an arrow holding one of Dye’s fruits at the very end, making them disappear for the moment.

The conclusion Dan came to as he considered it, was that he had been so busy carrying the weight of others that he had forgotten about himself. His own shadow was kept at bay, because dealing with other shadows took up so much of his time. It was so much easier. Like in real life, dealing with other people’s problems was a much easier task than to deal with your own.

Dan had no option to respond. The lights inside the house flickered until they went from white to amber. His shadow didn’t move an inch, and Dan was still unable to move himself.

“Be seeing you,” the shadow said.

It disappeared, and Dan was finally able to go to bed. The lights didn’t switch off or change colour.

Dan wasn’t sure what course of events he had set into motion now, but he was equally as intrigued as he was scared to watch them unfold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Blu by Jon Bellion  
> (thank you to anon for the suggestion!)
> 
> Hi! Here is a massive shout out to twitter user Vivi @cactilads as she posted two artworks inspired by Monochrome since the last update! Here are the links to the posts [1](https://twitter.com/cactilads/status/1207822337049055232) and [2](https://twitter.com/cactilads/status/1207841548077015040). They are both so absolutely stunning!! Make sure to go support her artwork, she is a truly amazing artist and I appreciate her support on this fic so so much <3


	58. Chapter 58

It is as though reality sets in on Wednesday.

What is happening is really happening, and Dan feels it because when he sits down at his PC, he finds himself at a loss. He has had his shower. His coffee is done and already half finished. Everything is ordinary, except for the feeling that arrives when he opens his browser and goes on Twitter. Seeing that Seagull tweeted ‘Squawk’ with a purple and green heart next to it at three in the morning doesn’t bring that feeling that it usually would.

Before, that would have felt like home.

Now, actually looking at the numbers and seeing people’s replies is staggering. Five thousand likes. One thousand retweets. Five hundred replies. There are, as always, discussions about it on the forum. His groupchat is talking about it as well. Dan scrolls the messages he missed while he was asleep with a sinking feeling.

**falldelight** : HE IS MAKING SQUAWKS

The next message is Morgan sharing Seagull’s tweet.

**falldelight** : I MISSED HIM

**ripewhisperer** : he’s probably squawking about the halloween thing, right? I saw someone say they’re expecting triangle art soon

**onebitwonder** : I hope it’s of Dye and White in the halloween outfits ;-;

**squigglyfw** : will it beat morgan’s art, though? I doubt it at this point

**falldelight** : I am going to CRY!! ;----; <333

**ripewhisperer** : I wish Seagull would actually talk to us sometimes. The squawking is only cute for so long

**squigglyfw** : yeah, they haven’t said much more about caves & gardens yet. People are making bullshit claims about it not coming out until 2025 or something

**onebitwonder** : Any claims are bullshit so far to be fair

**falldelight** : I WOULD WAIT ! :(

**ripewhisperer** : Of course you would <3

Dan feels anxious. He is reading all of this with a completely new perspective. They are talking about _Phil_ for fuck sake. They are taking a tweet he posted, containing one word and two emojis, and they are discussing it as if it holds some hidden meaning. Dan never really considered how it must feel, being on the receiving end of so much talk and discussion. He has had his own share of sometimes unwanted speculation, but his numbers are nowhere near Phil’s. It must feel restricting, in some ways. Dan understands now, a little bit, why Seagull keeps to his squawks more often than not. Anything else might just feel like too much.

Despite feeling completely alienated from this fanbase at the moment, Dan sends a message to the group chat. He doesn’t want to lose his friends, even if things are fucked up and Dan feels like he is a character in some type of far fetched novel in which impossible things keep happening.

**achromatic_bot** : i hope it’s cosy up seagull’s ass morgan

He immediately regrets it. Images of memories under the covers with Phil come barging into his head and the joke he made almost taints them. It hurts. It is so, so heavy. Dan covers his face with his hands. He is going to cry about this stupid fucking joke.

**ripewhisperer** : and you’re one to talk?

She sends Morgan’s comic to follow-up. The one from when Seagull responded to him. Where Morgan depicted him as a drooling mess because of Seagull’s response. It has been a while, so it has passed the stage of not being talked about, but now is not the time. Dan isn’t sure if it will ever be time for that, ever again.

If only they knew how accurate it actually is. 

**falldelight** : JAMIE :(

**achromatic_bot** : i won’t stand for this slander

**onebitwonder** : love all of this, really, but are you guys ever gonna read part two of ‘Ferries’? 

Mason attaches a link to a google document. At another point, Dan would have been all over that. Right now, he is only thinking about all of the fic and art he has read and seen about two characters that Phil created. Characters that are probably incredibly personal to him. Dan has enough fandom experience to be able to think logically about fanwork, and he holds on to those beliefs, but it is so different now. 

Everything is different. It won’t ever be the same. Even if Phil cuts Dan out of his life, there is no way in hell that Dan will ever be able to come back to this fandom and this game in the same way as he used to. He has officially lost that bond with it. It doesn’t feel personal, or beautiful, or even important, right now. It feels exploitative, and stalkerish, and obsessive. When Dan imagines trying to tell Phil about the conversations he has had in this group chat, he only feels shame.

Dan has worked so hard on removing himself from the inherent guilt and shame he used to feel in every part of his life. He has come so far.

It makes him angry, now. It doesn’t seem fair. This is the one place that he has, where everything feels mostly okay. This is his escape. Phil is his escape, too, but after this he won’t want to be with Dan. Dan is losing both of the things that makes not wanting to die feel worth it, no matter what.

He doesn’t want that. He can’t have that. He has to talk to Phil.

It is ten in the morning. Dan doesn’t work until later. Phil works from home, most of the time.

Dan stops himself from thinking too much. He turns off his PC, gets dressed, and is out the door within minutes.

-

Dan second guesses himself the whole way to Phil’s flat. He didn’t have time to put product in his hair, so it is all pushed down on his forehead under a beanie. He grabbed the nearest jumper, which happened to be the York hoodie. Everything about his appearance feels inappropriate, but that is not even remotely his biggest concern at the moment. His chest and stomach are practically burning as the nerves start a riot in his muscles, causing him to tense up in unnatural ways. He already knows it will make him feel sore tomorrow morning. The most workout his muscles ever get is from anxiety and fear. Dan is feeling so fucked up right now that it almost makes him laugh to think about that.

The cold is really coming now. Halloween is only three days away, but Dan feels the bite of the wind against his face as he hurries over the cobblestone path from the tube, between the narrow buildings and past Jimmy’s place, all the way to Phil and Chris’s.

There is one thought Dan allows. There is one thought that doesn’t hurt. It is that he will finally see Phil’s face again, for the first time since Saturday. Even though everything has changed since then, Dan can’t imagine feeling any different staring into the blues and yellows of Phil’s eyes. He needs him. This is why he is doing this. He has to stop Phil from rejecting him before it is too late.

Dan makes his way up the stairs and knocks on the door. He would stall, but he finds that he can’t. If he stalls, it gives him an option. He doesn’t want another option but to confront this. It is so completely opposite of anything Dan would have expected himself to do, months ago. Dan never used to be one to put thought into action, not until recently. He has confronted so many people about so many things now that he is scared to stop and think about it.

For now, he needs to confront another person.

PJ is the one that opens the door, after Dan waited long enough to have to knock again. Some of the adrenaline has worn off because of it. PJ is wearing grey skinny jeans and a plain white jumper. He doesn’t smile. Dan remembers how badly PJ wanted to get rid of him on Saturday. The conversation outside of Phil’s bedroom, the incessant knocking on the door. Dan never considered it much before, but PJ has never been fully open to Dan like the others do. Dan and Jimmy were already friends, and him and Phil obviously, and while he isn’t that close with Chris they’ve had a vulnerable conversation before. PJ is the only one that has stayed on the sidelines of Dan’s life, making no attempt at getting to know him better.

Maybe there is a reason for that. 

“Hi,” Dan says. “Can I come in?”

“Phil isn’t in,” PJ answers.

Never one for pleasantries, this one. Sometimes, Dan appreciates that. Right now, it annoys him to no end.

“What about Chris?” Dan asks.

“At Jimmy’s,” PJ says.

Dan frowns.

“What are you doing here alone, then?”

PJ frowns back. There is something else there, though. Something that tells Dan that he shouldn’t have asked that.

“Finishing up some work,” PJ says, and the frown turns into a forced smile.

“Alright,” Dan says. “Can I come in? I’ll just wait for Phil.”

There is a protest in PJ’s entire body language, but he seems to realise that he has no ground to stand on, keeping Dan out. None that he wants to tell Dan about, anyway.

“Sure,” PJ says and moves to make room for Dan in the hallway.

While Dan takes off his jacket and shoes, PJ goes to the living room. He doesn’t stay and make small talk like anyone else would. Dan follows him inside. If he can’t talk to Phil, PJ will have to do. 

There is a bottle of black glittery nail varnish on the table, accompanied by a sharp smell. PJ crosses his legs and paints a coat on his thumbnail. It takes Dan out of the moment. He hasn’t noticed if PJ has worn nail varnish around him before. The fact that he is sitting so comfortably painting his nails as if it were the most natural thing in the world makes Dan feel nervous. He feels like when Rob sits in that feminine way sometimes. There is something about it that makes Dan uncomfortable. He feels as though they are doing it to challenge him, and all of the things he had to suppress back when he was younger and never really knew how to stop suppressing.

“Where’s Phil, then?” Dan asks, faking confidence, as he sits down on the sofa opposite PJ. “I thought you guys worked here.”

“He’s at the office with Angie,” PJ shrugs without looking up from his hand. “I didn’t need to be there, though, so.”

Angie. Dan’s heart starts to beat harder. There is only one woman out of the three creators of Fall Whisperer, so that must be her. She must be Symbol. That is absolutely insane to Dan, for a moment. He has never met this person, but knowing she is out there and speaking to Phil right now feels like it is part of an alternate reality.

Dan thinks about it and imagines a woman with red hair. That leads him to think about Triangle, and his round glasses.

PJ is wearing round glasses. PJ works closely with Phil, and has done for the past ten years. They went to university together. 

Dan has been so focused on the fact that Phil and Seagull are the same person that he didn’t even stop to think about the others. But PJ has been drawing when Dan has been around. He vaguely remembers that one drunken night a couple of weeks ago, when he thought he caught a glimpse of purple and green on PJ’s tablet. He was making some type of Fall Whisperer art, right next to Dan.

“Do you have a problem with this or something?” PJ asks, an edge to his voice.

When Dan comes back to reality, he realises that he must have been staring. He blinks. He crosses his arms over his stomach and sits back as his face floods red. His mouth has gone dry. He has no clue how to speak to him now.

“No, not at all,” Dan mumbles.

PJ raises an eyebrow at him, pausing the careful process of painting his nails. He has one hand done now.

“I swear,” Dan says. He attempts to swallow but there is a lump in his throat. “I’m not like that at all, God. Sorry. I was just stuck in my head thinking.”

“Alright,” PJ says.

He seems to relax a bit, but he keeps an eye on Dan. Dan drums his finger on his elbow, feeling antsy and uncomfortable and like this is not at all where he wants to be. This is not what he wants to be doing. All the adrenaline and confidence and motivation he had to speak with Phil has been wiped away.

He feels incapable of even saying it to PJ. He is sitting opposite TriangleNoses and watching him paint his nails, for fuck sake. But it doesn’t register, really. PJ is just PJ. It doesn’t connect in Dan’s head, that he is a person whose tweets he has been stalking for years now. Or that he is a person that Dan felt nervous and excited about talking to in DMs. This is the person that Morgan looks up to and aspires to be like. Dan can’t imagine a person more unlike Morgan than PJ.

Dan is desperate. He needs to talk to someone. PJ has a clear dislike for him, and Dan has been too caught up in everything from Phil ignoring him to finding everything out to really consider why. He has no clue.

PJ looks less intimidating, right now. He looks almost serene as he applies a second coat to his fingernails.

Whatever it is that is broken between them, Dan wants to mend it. It isn’t PJ’s fault.

“Why do you wear nail polish?” Dan asks.

He hopes he doesn’t come off judgemental. He hopes he sounds like it is as dull a question as asking him why he is wearing a white jumper. Dan has no way of telling what he sounds like. He is too caught up in trying to seem normal.

“I just like it,” PJ says. “It looks nice, right?”

He shows off his hand and stretches his fingers. It does look good. The light reflects on the black, making the glitter even more mesmerising to look at.

“It does,” Dan says.

PJ’s smile turns gentle. Fuck. Dan doesn’t feel ready to face this kind of compassion right now.

“Would you like to try?” PJ asks.

There is no dad hovering over his shoulder, asking him why he is looking at the row of nail varnish at Tesco’s here. There are no intimidating guys making a joke out of the inflection of every word Dan speaks here. He has no consequences to deal with by agreeing to this.

And, most importantly, Dan would like to try.

“Yes,” Dan says.

PJ hands him the bottle and Dan feels it in his hand. His hand is shaking when he opens it. The past few days have been so much.

“Have you done this before?” PJ asks.

Dan looks up at that compassionate expression on PJ’s face and feels like crying.

“Yeah,” he says. He doesn’t want to think about that time. “It was a long time ago, though.”

PJ stands up and for a second, Dan is hit by an irrational fear. He feels the impulse to cover his face, to defend himself. Nothing happens, though, and Dan doesn’t give in to the impulse. PJ sits down on the same sofa as Dan, and reaches for the nail varnish.

“Gimme,” PJ says.

Dan puts it in PJ’s hand, dumbly.

“It should look good, shouldn’t it?” PJ says. “Let me put it on.”

Dan swallows. “Okay.”

They sit in silence for the time it takes for PJ to paint three fingernails. Dan likes the way it looks already. He has large hands, but the polish makes them look delicate. Dan remembers that Phil likes his hand. He wonders, idly, if he would like this look, too.

“Have you talked to Phil?” PJ breaks the silence by asking.

“No,” Dan says. “Not since- Not since Sunday? Or Monday?”

PJ glances at his face. It immediately turns bright red as the reminder of who PJ really is hits him again.

“You get it, right?”

Dan frowns. PJ turns his hand over, palm up, to get another angle.

“Get what?” Dan asks.

PJ takes a breath. It’s small, but Dan hears it.

“You get why things have been weird lately.”

It feels like a punch in the gut. PJ saying this solidifies it. It makes it official. Things are weird. Phil is trying to find an out. Dan’s life is going to go on without him, and without Fall Whisperer.

“Yeah,” Dan whispers.

PJ pauses. He looks up at Dan’s face and this time he lingers.

“How long have you known?” PJ asks.

Dan bites his bottom lip.

“I figured it out a couple of days ago,” he says.

PJ’s eyebrows shoot up on his forehead. The varnish accidentally gets on one of Dan’s knuckles. PJ grabs the paper roll from the coffee table and immediately fixes the mistake.

“Only a couple of days ago?” PJ says. “That’s--- Huh.”

Dan feels so vulnerable, with his hands and his heart in PJ’s hold. He can’t bear responding.

“I thought you’d known for longer,” PJ clarifies as he clears his throat.

“Why?” Dan manages to ask.

PJ shrugs. “I just had that feeling.”

Dan has no idea how he has given off the vibe of knowing _anything_.

“I felt like you knew what was happening on Saturday,” PJ says. “Why Phil called me over.”

Dan watches PJ start on the next hand. That whole ordeal is the last thing on his mind.

“What do you mean?” Dan asks.

“Well, Phil was freaking out, obviously,” PJ says, an edge to his tone.

“Why?”

Dan’s voice is completely emotionless. There is no inflection, no tone. Suddenly, he feels so very tired.

It makes PJ look up at his face again. He looks stressed out, but Dan still manages to find the compassion in there. He can’t tell what is worse, right now.

“You’re a fan,” PJ says with a small smile. “Like, a proper one. Yeah?”

Dan shuts his eyes for two seconds, taking that moment to somehow manage the shame, and opens them back up.

“I guess,” he says.

It sounds so shallow, said like that. It wasn’t at all what he talked to Phil about. He didn’t objectify the creators or the game. He only spoke about what the game means to him. Nothing else.

“Phil didn’t know what to do, so he called me over,” PJ says.

Dan feels a surge of rage inside.

“Why didn’t he just tell me?” he asks. “Why did he talk to you, of all people? That was my personal business.”

He doesn’t know what Phil told PJ, and he couldn’t in a million years imagine that he would betray Dan’s trust by telling him what Dan told him on Friday night, but Dan can’t know that for sure. He doesn’t know who the fuck Phil is, really.

PJ looks taken aback.

“I’m his best friend,” PJ says, the same aggressiveness in his tone.

Dan looks away. He just wants to go home.

“Hey,” PJ says, gentle again. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. Fuck.”

Dan looks back.

“I thought you already knew,” PJ explains. “I was worried you… had bad intentions.”

At that moment, PJ’s phone rings. Dan looks at the display of his phone next to them on the coffee table.

_Phil Lester is calling._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Ghost by Lianne La Havas


	59. Chapter 59

Time seems to stand still for a moment. Dan and PJ are on the sofa, Dan’s hands are in PJ’s, and they stare at the phone that keeps buzzing as if it is an alien object.

Time begins to move again when Dan retrieves his hands and PJ fumbles with the nail varnish and puts it on the coffee table. He glances at Dan as he accepts the call and answers. Dan stares, dumbfounded. This is the closest he has gotten to hearing Phil’s voice since-

Well, since he last watched ‘The Making Of Fall Whisperer’.

“That’s fine,” PJ says into the phone. “I’m definitely not getting work done.”

He shoots Dan a pointed look, which Dan smiles in response to. He doesn’t know why. It isn’t like they have been having a nice time together.

“When do you get back?” PJ asks.

Dan’s heart starts to pound, hard.

“Sure, alright,” PJ says. “I’ll see you then.”

He ends the call. The silence that follows is suffocating.

“He won’t come back until later,” PJ says as he picks the nail varnish back up and gestures for Dan to give him his hand.

“When’s ‘later’?” Dan asks.

“About four or five,” PJ says as he unscrews the brush and begins to paint Dan’s nails again.

Dan’s heart sinks. He has work at four. Part of him is mildly relieved, but the part of him that is sick of putting all of this up is stronger.

They sit in silence for a while. PJ gets to the second coat before Dan speaks up.

“Do you think it’s worth it?” Dan asks. “To talk about? Or is he…”

Dan doesn’t want to think this, let alone say it, but he has to ask someone that knows the situation. He can’t let himself keep waiting and waiting for Phil to talk to him, and to work this out, if Phil isn’t interested.

PJ takes a breath. He screws the lid on the nail varnish, apparently satisfied with his work. Dan looks down at his hands and finds that he can hardly admire the lock of his now black, glittery fingernails. Right now, nothing really matters.

“No,” is what PJ ends up saying. “I think it’s best if you don’t. Not yet, anyway.”

Even if this situation is crazy, and impossible, something about the progression of events confirms something within Dan. This is just what happens to him. This is how things turn out. Good things don’t get to be good for long. Opening up his heart and letting someone in isn’t worth it. There is always something that happens.

Dan fought hard for this. He went against everything, and despite how easy his connection with Phil is, there were a lot of hurdles before they got to the point of giving in to it. Dan can’t regret the week they had, though, no matter how much it hurts. He can’t regret experiencing the closest he has ever gotten to true love.

“It’s better if you wait for him,” PJ concludes.

“Does he know that I know?” Dan asks.

PJ stretches his mouth into something between a smile and a frown.

“He doesn’t think that you know,” he says. “That’s what he told me on Saturday morning, anyway.”

Right. Saturday morning when Dan was sleeping in Phil’s bed and Phil was panicking and asking PJ for advice.

“Are you going to tell him?” Dan asks.

PJ stands up. He rolls his shoulders back and sighs. Dan gets up, too.

“Just wait for him,” PJ says. “He’ll find out either way.”

There is a lump in Dan’s throat. There is a pain in his chest. Somehow, he feels very sure that this is the last time he is seeing PJ. He feels sure that he won’t see Phil again. This is the end, in many ways, of so many things.

Dan nods.

“Okay,” he says. “I have to go to work.”

PJ eyes him.

“Are you okay?”

Suddenly, Dan’s mood shifts and he feels able to mask everything going on inside. He hasn’t exactly been bad at doing that before, but this is different. He feels as though he is actually fooling himself into believing that everything is fine, and that nothing has happened. Maybe that is what happens when Phil puts on his different masks. Maybe Phil only feels the appropriate thing in the moment. Maybe he has an easy time letting go, just like all those emotions Dan has seen arrive and leave his expression, so quickly that in hindsight it is slightly unnerving.

“I’m fine, yeah.” Dan even manages a real smile. “Hey, thanks for the nail polish. It looks good.”

PJ gives him an odd look.

“Yeah, it does,” he says. “No problem.”

PJ follows Dan to the door, as if reminded that manners are a thing. He even gives Dan a hug before he leaves. Dan refuses to feel any emotion about that. He doesn’t think about how PJ held him a bit tighter, for a second longer than an average hug, before letting go and looking at him with all the compassion in the world. Dan won’t register that. He can’t.

It feels too much like the end of something. It feels like the end of everything.

There is an importance on working on accepting the bad feelings, and participating in your own experience. Dan has learned this several times by now, and that is what he intends to do from now on. There is a difference, though, when you have to go to work. There is a difference when you have to spend hours greeting people, and appear to have things under control. Dan can’t do that while he falls apart. He can’t help himself at work, either, because there is nothing there to comfort him and make him feel like things are okay.

So Dan reverts to what he knows and goes on autopilot. He replaces his usual thoughts of Fall Whisperer to make the hours go by with a vision of a completely different life, in another place, where there is no time limit on enjoying life.

-

Waking up back at the old house, the player is met by an almost eerie sense of peacefulness. There is quiet in place of music and ambient noise. The room is still lit up with amber, but there is no shadow in sight. When he first played, Dan went straight to the wardrobe first thing waking up. He changed his clothing from the default blue jeans and white t-shirt, and switched it to his regular all black outfit. Exiting the closet menu, Dan expected for his shadow to show up. He interacted with different items in the house, hoping to trigger a cutscene. Nothing happened.

He exited the house, holding on to the expectation of some type of change. But Dan walked around his house, and down to the abandoned house near the water. He even made his character simply stand still for a few minutes, waiting to see if that would start up some event. Nothing happened.

Dan didn’t want to go back to the cabin, or the garden, or the locomotive, or the cave. This was the place where he could take on his shadow by himself. The game had been pushing him to come to this conclusion. Everything had indicated that he should disregard Dye and White’s quests and go his own way. So Dan stuck around his house, and ended up doing the things he had done at the start of the game. He explored, and went fishing, and foraged for random plants, and nothing happened.

Part of Dan knew, at the time, that if he were to go back to the cave or garden he would eventually find Dye and White. Part of him was absolutely aware of the fact that this couldn’t be the end of his story with them, because they had been with him throughout this experience, but he kept stalling anyway. He could find some comfort in just doing his own thing. Where before he was anxious to progress the story, and face all the things that he was about to face, he now enjoyed getting back to all of the things that he had thought that the game would be about. 

A few in-game days into this tactic, something was different when he exited the house this time. There was a bubble with an image of a letter above his mailbox, indicating that he had mail. Dan had, at this point, never received mail in the game. He immediately right clicked the mailbox, and a letter covered the screen.

_Meet me in the cave. -W_

When Dan clicked the message away, the bubble above the mailbox remained. He clicked it again, to read a second letter.

_Come see me in the garden. -D_

Like the very start of the game, Dan was prompted to make this decision. Instead of being begged to do this by screaming, terrifying shadows, he was simply asked. Dan viewed Dye and White as a unit at this point, so to see them sending separate messages now made him feel uneasy. Were they going against one another again? Were they creating that distance, where only one of two ways was available? And was this due to Dan’s absence? Had Dan been the necessary factor for them to stay united, and so blur these lines that used to be so clear and opposing of one another?

Or, was this a test? Dan had made things progress through deliberately not listening to Dye or White. Would he be set back by following their instructions?

Dan didn’t really know what decision to make. Should he go to the garden, or the cave, or disregard both options? Their metaphorical uses were clear at this point. In broad terms, the garden was the protective spot, the one where you could rest and regain your energy but ultimately regress if you started to use this protection as a safety blanket. The cave was a metaphor for the act of facing your problems head on, and to make the progress needed, but taking that on all on your own caused you to get lost in the dark, on your way to somewhere but incapable of knowing which way to go or really taking steps because rejecting help isn’t strength, or progressive. And the third option, to do things on your own and in doing so trusting your own judgement. Dan knew what the bad part of this was already. It caused him to stagnate. There is only so far you will get with only yourself to lead the way. Eventually, you run into problems. And when you have stayed on your own path for so long, it makes it hard to trust the judgement of other people again. After finally regaining this trust in yourself, the idea of someone else knowing what is better for you is an insult, even if it could be true.

Considering all of this, Dan remained unsure of what to do. So, in the middle of all of this, he decided to not make a decision. He decided to go back inside the house, and go to bed. He wished for it to trigger another option. He wished for it to clarify what it was that he needed to do at this point. But all that happened was that, every other in-game day, he received the letters from Dye and White again. His shadow didn’t appear. Dan was all alone and forced to make a decision just like the start of the game, and despite everything that had happened between the start and this point of the game, he rather felt less sure of which route to take than more like he had expected to feel.

On the sixth in-game day after first receiving the letters, Dan decided to go back. He would choose one of those options. He would choose either the cave or the garden, again. 

Dan didn’t think much of it as he made his way to the garden. It wasn’t until he reached the entrance that he stopped to consider his options. It could be bad to make the same decision he had made at the start. He could be meant to go to White. 

Dan stayed still, considering, and waited for the decision to be made for him.

-

Once Dan is on the tube home from work, he checks his phone. He puts his headphones over his beanie and ears and opens his music app. His thumb hovers over the playlist he usually listens to on the tube home from work. It works well for this time of the night, when his body is tired and his mind is anxious. It doesn’t matter how much practice he gets, walking alone in the dark after work three nights a week. His fear of the dark remains, only increased or decreased by his circumstances and general mood.

Tonight, Dan is terrified. Tonight, every corner turned was a possible safety hazard. He hadn’t even dared to put music on during his walk to the tube out of fear that he would miss a noise that could alert him of any approaching danger. Of course, Dan made it to the Underground in one piece. He wasn’t attacked, and he wasn’t shouted at. Regardless, Dan’s mind is still spinning and his heart is still pounding. He can’t listen to the Fall Whisperer playlist. Just another source of comfort that has been stolen from him.

Dan puts on a random piano playlist and checks his notifications. He isn’t thinking. He won’t consider the cause of the anxiety, or the way it manifests in the fear of being attacked. Dan analyses himself enough as it is. He deserves a break from going over things in his head, over and over again. He can’t think of bright blue eyes and purple and yellow leaves and York hoodies and--

Dan doesn’t have to strain himself to find a distraction when he sees the notification for a text message that he received four hours ago. He opens it up, already feeling the beginnings of an anger that will surely consume him.

**Dad** : Hello Dan. You know that I understand how you feel in regards to your mother and what happened in our house during that year. I know that it can be hard for you still sometimes. But you have to consider your mother’s position. She has been sober for two years and though there are still problems with her behavior I think it’s time that you stop punishing her now. All she wanted to do was visit her son. She has been crying for days now after this confrontation between you two. I don’t mean to alarm you, but you know that sometimes she uses any excuse to drink, and I can’t keep her from doing that if she wants to. She hasn’t done it yet, but you should really think about what you’re risking by telling her that she ruined your life. There’s nothing to gain from that. You need to let the past be the past and move on like the rest of us instead of using this as a reason for why you’re not getting better. I understand that it was hard, but you have to manage your emotions like an adult.

There is a second, shorter message underneath, sent two hours ago.

**Dad** : Don’t ring her when you see this. It’s better if she can deal with this without you pressuring her. Love you.

There is nothing in Dad’s message to relieve Dan’s anger. At first, his mind goes blank. All there is, is a white hot rage that he can’t control. He breathes steady breaths, all too aware of the fact that there are people surrounding him. 

The white hot rage turns into darkness soon enough. There is no light to be found. Dan is somewhere inside the cave, but he has nothing now. No crystals, no light, no hope of getting through because in here, there is no one on his side. The only company he has is that of violent shadows, taunting him. He is still here, after all these years. He still means this little to his parents. All that he is, to them, is a scapegoat. Someone to push their issues onto, someone to blame when something goes wrong. Dan doesn’t get to be a person.

_I don’t mean to alarm you, but you know that sometimes she uses any excuse to drink, and I can’t keep her from doing that if she wants to._

What is a better way to make sure Dan never says what he thinks again, than to threaten him with the possibility of history repeating itself? What better way, than to present the idea of a do-over of one of his worst traumas? Dan is almost impressed. They really have got it down by now. They know exactly which button to press in order for Dan to cower, and apologise, and take back everything he said. They know exactly what to do in order to emotionally control him, still. They don’t even realise that that is what they are doing. Dad probably thinks that he is doing the right thing, because why would he ever blame Mum for anything unless he is the one that falls victim to her behaviour?

Dan sees through it now. He knows what they’re trying to do, but it doesn’t work anymore. Dan has compromised and made himself smaller for as long as he can remember but he has grown. Dad has no right to push this on him.

Still, it isn’t something that Dan can just brush off. He is still a monster, in the eyes of his parents. Mum is still using Dad as a shield, to protect herself from Dan. Nothing has changed, and they won’t ever change. Dan can’t keep hoping for that to happen.

Mum and Dad have not grown, even after everything that happened. Dan remembers the times when he would spend the night playing Fall Whisperer and take a break every hour or so to check Mum’s breathing. He remembers not feeling any relief when her breath hit the back of his hand. He remembers being that soldier, always on duty, making sure his Mum doesn’t accidentally kill herself. Mum and Dad won’t remember that, though. They have no gratitude for it. They don’t realise the severity of it, even now.

There is no one here to challenge their perception of him. There is only Dan himself, and even after all this time he has spent deconstructing how their manipulation affected him, it is still hard to remain aware that they are the ones that are in the wrong. Dan knows what they’re doing, but in some sense, it still works.

When Dan gets home, he takes off his clothes and gets into bed after brushing his teeth. He is safe here, in his bed. He is under no pressure, and there is no risk of being attacked. Still, he keeps his night light on. Still, his mind detaches from his body and his perspective shifts to that of the spectator. He stays there, in the corner of the room, watching as the stranger in his bed shakes and sobs and cries into a pillow.

Dan has lost everything. It is no wonder that he is losing himself, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Let Down by Radiohead


	60. Chapter 60

The next day passes in a blur.

Dan fell asleep eventually, and though his alarm was set for twelve pm, he woke up at six am. His body felt tense the moment he opened his eyes. His brain provided him with the unhelpful reminder of Dad’s text message last night, and he had no time to really start up before he shut down.

The hours go by and once it is time for Dan to go to work, he finds it hard to remember what he got up to all day. He avoided social media completely. He just clicked himself forward through different Wikipedia articles and YouTube videos to mildly entertain his deactivated brain. At one point, he remembers googling ‘how to stop dissociation’, but he can’t remember the result of the search. Dan feels absolutely debilitated, so much younger, searching desperately for some type of help. He can’t help himself when he is like this. 

When there are stages of it, and he realises that it is happening, he can prevent it from getting worse. But no matter how many attempts he has made not to get to this stage, the past week has been stressful enough for Dad’s message to push him there without Dan having any means to push back against it. His crystals have abandoned him. He is left defenseless against himself.

It isn’t until after Dan comes back from break during work, that his brain starts to make sense. It has been difficult to eat and it has been difficult to drink and it has been difficult to smile back in the break room when his coworkers tried to include him in the conversation. He sits down on his chair and checks the next scheduled patients on his computer. Phil is supposed to come in today. That is the one thing that has been trying to beat its way out of his subconsciousness and into his consciousness.

When Dan looks at the schedule, Phil is not booked for his session today. It was cancelled a couple of days ago. Dan clicks on Eric’s schedule to see if Phil is booked for next week.

He is. He is booked for several weeks, actually.

None of the sessions are during Dan’s work hours. All of them are on either Mondays or Tuesdays - inconsistent due to the sudden change. Phil doesn’t want to see him. Phil went out of his way to make sure he doesn’t see him. Dan feels nothing at first. He simply stares blankly at his monitor, scrambling to find any kind of reaction from inside his mind.

Something appears, challenging the haze. Dan knows exactly what it is before it arrives. He doesn’t have Phil or Fall Whisperer to lean on now; neither of those things bring him comfort anyway. There is nothing standing between Dan and what he truly feels. There is nothing to prevent him from taking in what he has managed to stave off since Phil stopped responding. It has only grown since Dan figured out who Phil really is. Dan can’t push it away anymore.

It is rage. At first, the tiniest flame ignites, but it grows fast like wildfire.

It is unfair. All of it. It is so fucking unfair.

It is unfair that Dan comes home to an empty bed. It is unfair that he can’t look at his messages. It is unfair that everyone treats him like a disposable object; something to punish when you need someone to blame. Someone to avoid, because talking to him is too hard.

Dan is used to Mum and Dad. He doesn’t expect them to act any differently. The anger stems from them, but ultimately, is not about them at all.

For the first time, Dan is truly angry at Phil. Like Mum, Phil is hiding right now. He is using PJ as a shield, and for what? Because Dan made the oh, so horrifying mistake of admiring something he wrote? Phil isn’t doing this right at all. He should be communicating. He told Dan that he wants to be part of his life, no matter what that means.

He isn’t part of Dan’s life right now. He listened to the deepest, most personal story Dan has to tell and completely shut him out.

Sometimes, Dan doesn’t realise that he is being treated unfairly. He isn’t used to anything else. He grew up as a scapegoat, finding conflict in almost all of his environments, because he was an easy target. He didn’t fight back. When his defenses were supposed to have been built up, readying him for the world, he was instead broken down by the people that were supposed to lift him up.

Dan knows better now. He knows that he is worth something. He knows that he wants to live. He knows that he has something to offer to the world and to the people around him, even if it is small. That doesn’t really matter, though. Even if Dan was an asshole, he wouldn’t deserve this sort of treatment from the first person he has ever really trusted.

He loves Phil. He understands his point of view on this. It is an impossible, unbelievable situation. There are so many different ways to look at this, and many of those ways could justify Phil’s behaviour. Phil is taking the coward’s way out, though. He can’t just ignore Dan forever. He can’t, because Dan won’t let him.

Phil means too much to him for Dan to let him walk away, right now.

When Dan attaches, he clings on, but he beats himself up for it. He makes himself step away, to try to make up for those impulses. But it isn’t wrong to attach. Dan attached to Phil and that simple act is not inherently wrong. Phil attached to Dan, too, or so Dan thought. It isn’t wrong for Dan to want to fight for him. It is what Dan wished that someone, anyone, would have done for him.

If Phil isn’t ready to fight for this right now, then Dan will have to be the one to do it.

All Dan wonders is whether he is fighting for a lost cause. Phil might not want him. If this was happening only a month ago, Dan would have rather been ignored than dumped. He would have imagined that Phil would come eventually, if he kept quiet. If he said nothing to alter what Phil’s opinion of him might be, then everything would have been fine.

That is not how Dan feels now. He doesn’t want to be pushed away, but he would rather be told that that is what is happening than waiting for something that won’t come.

Dan is sitting on his bed in his underwear when he gets his phone and opens his conversation with Phil.

_I promise I’ll explain everything soon <3_

It is complete bullshit. ‘Soon’ passed two days ago. ‘Soon’ is a promise that Phil has broken. Dan feels his eyes fill up with tears. He isn’t sad. He is frustrated. He is angry. That is easier to think than to realise the deep sense of betrayal that is being buried in the pit of his stomach.

**Dan** : hi we need to talk

It is marked read within one minute. There is not even an attempt at a response.

Dan closes out of his and Phil’s text messages. Phil owes him an explanation. He won’t talk if it is Dan who sends the message, though, it seems. 

Dan knows who Phil will answer, though.

Dan opens his and Seagull’s twitter DMs. His heart is beating hard. It still feels wrong, somehow, to picture Seagull as Phil. Whatever exists in Dan’s imagination is wrong, though. He has been talking to Phil this whole time. He has been looking up to Phil for all these years. That is just a fact and Dan is not going to cry about it right now.

**achromatic_bot** : hi.

Of course, here he gets an immediate response.

**Seagull** : Hi! :)

Dan wants to cry. He feels bad, doing this to Phil. He doesn’t even know how to go about it. There is no guide as to how to tell your boyfriend that the fan he has been talking to is himself. 

Dan decides to be vague. That is what Phil would have done, in this situation.

**achromatic_bot** : >3

**Seagull** : ? :P

Dan opens his emoji keyboard and selects the purple night sky and the purple heart. He stares at the message he is about to send for a good minute and a half, considering. The spectator is panicking. It tells him that if he does this now, Phil will hate him. Phil won’t ever want to be with him. This is mean. This is putting Phil through the exact thing that Dan has been going through this week, and Dan would not wish that experience on anyone.

Dan deletes the message and locks his phone.

The spectator has calmed. Dan has had enough experience with it this week that tempting another panic attack is not worth getting somewhere with Phil. Not right now. 

Dan scrambles for a distraction, but he can’t find any. All of his usual distractors are found online, and right now he is scared shitless of everything entailing that. He thinks hard until his eye catches the plastic bag Mum left beside his front door the other day.

That could be some kind of distraction, at least.

Dan gets up and approaches it. He grabs it in his hand, feeling at what’s inside. It’s a thin, flat board of some kind, in a rectangular shape. Dan brings the bag over to his bed. He puts on his nightlight and pulls the rectangle shape out of the plastic bag.

It is a canvas. Slightly larger than an A4 sheet of paper, he holds it in his hands, trying to decipher the illustration. At first, it looks too abstract. It isn’t like Mum’s simple paintings hung up on the walls in their house, filled with flowery designs. 

The background of the painting is a baby blue colour, while the centre of it has a strange mix of pointy purple and green shapes, locked together in a compelling pattern.

Eventually, the pattern starts to make sense. The longer Dan stares at those shapes, the more they become what Mum probably intended for them to be. The bottom is green, shaped like a hexagon, large and in charge. The sides are reflecting light that is coming from the left side. Out of the green hexagon grows two long, black stalks, blooming with purple crystals. Dan strokes the side of the green crystal vase, feeling his heart start to beat.

At the bottom right corner, the painting is signed. Mum has not written her name, though. It is simply a squiggly text that reads: 

_Made for Dan, 2019_

Dan has told Mum about Fall Whisperer before. During some days, while he still lived at home, he would talk about the game to what he thought were deaf ears. She didn’t let show if she listened while she was lying on the sofa. She was probably asleep half the time or more. And here is a painting she drew for Dan, with the emerald and the amethyst shaped like a vase and a flower, somehow perfectly encompassing Fall Whisperer with all of its hidden meanings in one image. 

Dan’s heart slows down. He has never felt so seen, not by Mum. She has never done anything like this. An unknown feeling of gratitude fills Dan’s chest and he suddenly breathes easy. The painting is absolutely gorgeous. 

The emerald stands as a base for the amethyst, allowing it to blossom. Dan can be that for Phil. He can be strong for Phil. 

He takes his phone, selects the purple night sky emoji and the purple heart emoji, and sends them to Seagull. 

It doesn’t take long before there is a response. 

**Seagull** : … Dan? 

\- 

Dan stalled by the entrance of the garden. It was inviting. Some part of him thought that colours were more vivid this time, meant to draw you in. When Dan right clicked it, the prompt to enter came up. It looked just like it always did. Unlike the beginning of the game, when Dan had first attempted to enter the cave, there was no question of whether the garden would be the safer option. 

Dan clicked away. He didn’t know why, but he felt it was important to go to the cave first, this time. He wasn’t about to wait any longer. He wasn’t about to keep putting blocks in his own path to keep him from getting to the true ending of the game. He had become dependent on this, he realised. He was so invested in this fictional world, keeping him company while his life was seemingly falling apart outside of it, that he didn’t want to let go. He didn’t want to reach the final conclusion, because he couldn’t know what was on the other side. If he went through the end of this, finally, wouldn’t that mean that it was over? Wouldn’t that mean that he would have to seek new ways of coping, all alone in this house and in this brain? 

The game wasn’t intended for him to cling to it like this. It was a source of comfort, a distraction, but he shouldn’t hold on just to hold on. He had to get to the other side. He had to let go. He had to face himself. 

Dan wasn’t seeing things. The colours were more vivid. They seemed to increase in contrasts the closer Dan got to the cave entrance. Dan willed himself into believing that this was a sign that he was doing the right thing. He was walking towards whatever conclusion the game intended for him to have. The real, final one. 

Going through the cave was a colourful experience, this time. The rooms were all rainbow filled, as the music in the background marched on to a beat that was faster than Dan had experienced before. 

He made sure to collect every crystal he could find. In the first few rooms, rare crystals were suddenly able to be found. Opals and peridots and citrines and turquoises and amethysts and emeralds. They took up space in Dan’s inventory, but Dan didn’t care. He felt that he was bound to have to use them now that they were all scattered around the entire cave, easy to dig out and bring along. 

The deeper he gets, the more shadows appear. They don’t crowd him. They don’t even get close. Whenever Dan approaches them to collect a crystal, they scatter. Dan had never seen this many shadows at once. He had never heard them talk of anything but pain. Every word they had said previous to this had been in a begging tone. 

During Dan’s final walk through the cave, they spoke as he passed, but they said something new. 

__”You can do this.”_ _

__“You’ve come so far.”_ _

__“You are ready now. It is time.”_ _

__“Take your core to your heart and let it flourish. They are waiting.”_ _

__“You made the right choice.”_ _

__“Thank you.”_ _

Their encouragements filled Dan’s heart up. He felt nostalgic, passing these shadows inside this cave, knowing it would never be like this again. Dan could restart the game any time he would like, but this was his first experience with it. He would never get a new first experience, he thought. Even while it was happening Dan stayed aware of this, always overthinking, never fully pushing himself into the moment. 

Once Dan got to the room before the very bottom of the cage, the one with the darkness, he stalled. The drumming of the music has only increased. When he has entered this next room, he would have to face whatever is on the other side and end the journey he has been holding on to like a crutch, hoping life won’t slip him off his footing and into something terrifying that he doesn’t feel ready for. 

For a moment, he thought about going back to the garden. It’s not as if the game would punish him for prolonging the ending. Maybe he would even find something new, another clue as to how to end this once and for all. He could take his time. No one is going to stop him. He has all the time in the world. 

Dan is tired, though. He is tired of pushing and pulling. He knows what he wants, and he knows where he should go. He has to face all of this, once and for all. 

Just like the first time Dan played Fall Whisperer, responding to Seagull’s message feels like an end and a beginning all at the same time. He is letting go of falling in line with whatever he has been trying to abide by, some set of rules his father instilled in him. 

__”Never make a scene, don’t create conflict; be sure that your problems are not real like other people’s problems are. Your opinions don’t matter. You don’t get to be a person.”_ _

Dan entered the final room of the cave, knowing he couldn’t turn back. 

Dan responds to the message now, knowing there is no turning back. 

He is a person, no matter what his upbringing tried to make him believe. He gets to follow his own path, even if it may not be comfortable to everyone else. 

**achromatic_bot** : yeah phil 

**achromatic_bot** : it’s me. it’s dan. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: His Theme by Toby Fox
> 
> The other day Fi @psychicmoth on twitter posted an amazing piece of art, inspired by Monochrome. Make sure to check it out [here](https://twitter.com/psychicmoth/status/1210824197133324288) and to follow and support her!! Thank you so, so much, Fi. You've truly visualised this feeling I've tried to get across with words :') <3


	61. Chapter 61

Seagull doesn’t respond. Dan stares at the screen for a long time, by some deluded notion that if he stares for long enough he will know what Phil is thinking. He might have fucked everything up. He might have ensured that not even Seagull will respond to him anymore.

Dan glances at the crystal flower painting and sighs. He puts it on his night stand, leaning against the wall. In the middle of all this monochrome, colours appear. Dan would have never imagined that they could come from Mum, of all people. He never expected to look at something that reminds him of her and feel something other than pain inside.

They aren’t on the other side of what pushed them against each other. They may never be, but then, forgiveness isn’t linear. It isn’t a destination that you get to after you pass the finish line. Everything Rob said makes sense to Dan now. He is finally ready for everything Susanne tried to coax him to realise. It makes the void inside his heart fill in. It makes the pitch black patches that his parents left in his achromatic puzzle switch around. They aren’t colourful, but they aren’t pits, either. Dan won’t fall into them. 

Forgiveness is a path. There may be no true end, but once you’ve switched to that lane, things change. Dan is never going to stop being affected by his past, or his familial relationship. He isn’t choosing forgiveness for their sakes. He is choosing it for himself, for his life. It eases some of the hurt. It enables him to let go of some of the worst of it.

For the first time, Dan is taking the path of forgiveness with no pretense. He is doing it to ease the weight on his shoulders. He doesn’t care if it pleases Mum or Dad. He can put himself first and he can choose to acknowledge that he was wronged without always having a visceral reaction, begging to make it right.

The spectator doesn’t have a single word to say about that. Its silence is music to Dan’s ears.

Mum and Dad will never give him what he wants. They can never make up for what they did. For so long, Dan wished and hoped for them to say or do something to make it better. To undo the damage they did, to make Dan feel like he can be a person again.

For all that time, Dan knew it wouldn’t happen. Mum’s painting isn’t a peace offering. She said nothing to bring Dan comfort when she visited. She doesn’t know the first thing about what Dan has gone through. The painting is simply an acknowledgement of one of Dan’s interests, and Dan is choosing to dive into the good feeling he gets from it rather than the bad. He is on a path now, and even if he has to take it because of the things they did and they way they treated him, it doesn’t have to involve them.

Dan’s glass heart is glowing green like the emerald. The crystals that surround it don’t need to enclose it anymore. Dan can protect his own heart, his own core.

His phone starts to ring. The name on the screen is ‘Phil Lester’. Dan doesn’t hesitate for even a second.

“Hello?” Dan says, mouth dry, once he picks up.

“Hi.”

Phil’s voice has never sounded like this. Not when Dan has heard it. He thinks of what Jimmy said, how he described Phil as ‘scared’. That is the only descriptor Dan has for the sound of his voice now. He sounds absolutely terrified.

When Dan imagined them first speaking after all of this, he thought that Phil would be the one to comfort Dan. Now Dan feels a deep seated need to comfort Phil. He doesn’t exactly know how to. He doesn’t know what Phil is thinking.

The silence between them is palpable. Dan’s chest hurts.

“So you do know,” Phil says.

Dan doesn’t know what to make of his tone.

“I-,” he says, stuttering.

“How long?” Phil interrupts him.

“Since Monday,” Dan says. “I was watching that video Seag- you narrated.”

Phil lets out a loud breath. It isn’t a sigh and it isn’t a groan. Dan wishes he could see his face, to make out what is happening on it.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Dan asks.

He has every opportunity to get on his knees and beg right now. That is what his instincts, the spectator, tell him to do. Some part of Dan is still so utterly convinced that he did something wrong and needs to apologise, but like Susanne said, those first thoughts aren’t always true. They rarely are, in Dan’s case. So he decides to stand his ground. If the cave won’t light up for him, he will somehow light it up himself.

“I was going to,” Phil says. “When we talked last week, I-”

He stops. Dan remembers the panic attack, the way he had to hold on tight for Phil to not fall apart in his arms.

“I needed time to think,” Phil says. “So I thought I’d wait until the next morning. But then I couldn’t sleep, and I ended up texting PJ, asking him what to do.”

“Oh,” Dan says.

“He came over by his own will,” Phil says. “He told me to go to sleep, and then when I woke up the next morning he was just there, in the kitchen.”

“You said you called him over,” Dan says, frowning.

“I didn’t want you to be upset with him,” Phil sighs. “I didn’t want him to be upset with you.”

“What was happening, then?” Dan asks. “Why did he come?”

“He was scared you were some crazed fan,” Phil says. “He was sure you already knew who we are, anyway.”

Dan swallows dryly.

“And what did _you_ think?” he asks.

Phil is quiet for a moment.

“I didn’t think you knew,” he says.

“So why did you do as he said?” Dan asks. “Why did you let him dictate everything? You know me. You know me so much better than he ever will. I’m so _sick_ of being talked around all the time.”

Dan’s emotions are getting the best of him now. He isn’t just talking to Phil. Phil has only done this one time, in a situation no one could really prepare for. Dan is somehow calling out to his parents in the middle of a conversation about something completely different. He slows his breathing and tries to centre himself into this moment. Not into some different argument at a different time that Dan will never win, even if he manages to get an apology out of Phil.

“I didn’t think that I had a reliable view of the situation,” Phil says, some bite to his tone, matching Dan’s. “I wanted to think the best of you, because we get on so well and I can’t trust myself when I’m definitely falling in--”

Phil stops abruptly and Dan takes a sharp breath.

“I thought PJ had a more distanced view on things and might be catching things that I wasn’t because,” Phil’s voice is full of emotion, “because I like you so much.”

Dan wants to get on the tube and see Phil right this second.

“I like you too,” Dan says, holding back tears.

It is more than that. They both know it. Dan can feel it even in this mixed up conversation.

“I don’t know what to do,” Phil says.

_Help me_ , is what Dan hears. _Please, make this okay._

Dan doesn’t know how to do that. He doesn’t know if he is the one to do that.

He glances at Mum’s painting. He could be the emerald, holding up the blossoming amethyst. Maybe that is what Phil has been needing, all along. Someone that he doesn’t need to put on a mask with.

There is a difference between wanting to be that person, and being allowed to be that person. Dan had thought he was already allowed, but there is still so much he needs to learn about him. There is so much they both need to learn about each other.

They won’t get anywhere, waiting for the other person to speak.

“Phil,” Dan says, pushing the screaming spectator away for long enough to get the words out, “can I see you right now?”

It is two o’clock in the morning. It is an insane thing to suggest, really.

Dan reminds himself that Phil likes storms.

“Yeah,” Phil says in a breath. “I’ll come to you.”

Dan would rather go to Phil’s. If he did, then he would know that it is really happening.

He has to trust Phil, though. If he doesn’t, then none of this is worth it, anyway.

“Okay,” Dan says.

“Okay,” Phil echoes.

There is a silence, and then they laugh at the same time. Dan’s chest fills with purple.

“I’ll be there in half an hour max,” Phil says, and it sounds like he is moving now. “Bye.”

The sudden distance in his voice catches Dan off guard. Like the thoughts Dan has been having about him this week, Phil’s dualities and contrasts make themselves clear. He is warm for a moment and then cold in the next. It must be some kind of defense mechanism. Against what, Dan isn’t so sure.

“Yeah, okay,” Dan mumbles. “Bye.”

Phil is the one that ends the call. Dan stares at the screen. His heart beats fast. He can’t sit in his flat and wait. He realises this after only one second of waiting. 

Dan gets to his feet and puts on his black jeans and the black jumper with white stripes covering it horizontally and vertically, creating a pattern. He takes on his coat and his shoes and his beanie, and goes out into the night that he normally dreads with a complete disregard for his fear of lurking dangers. The sky is too polluted for any stars to be visible, but as Dan makes his way down to the Underground, he imagines that they’re there; just behind all the sickly smoke, colourful and calming and so very Phil.

-

There is no turning back. Dan entered the final room of the cave, just like White had instructed him to do. Not going to the garden first to stock up on food or armour or weapons might have been foolish, but there was no undoing that now. Had he entered the garden, he would have prolonged everything once more. As much as change terrifies Dan, some part of him always knows when it is needed. It is a gut feeling he rarely trusted before now.

For a long time, Dan didn’t understand the ending of the game. He didn’t understand why the final room of the cave had changed. He didn’t step into the room with the darkness, this time. Instead, he entered a room that looked exactly the same, except, the pit of darkness was filled with light.

Dan only had to take one look at Dye and White to know that this wasn’t his world. This was the bottom of the cave in the Shadow Realm, where Dye and White’s shadows stood staring down at the light that would bring them to Dan’s realm. A cutscene started, in which Dan’s character approached the light. Dye and White’s shadow selves jumped in an almost comically synchronized manner when they realised that Dan was there.

“Dan?” Dye’s shadow asked.

Dan had no option to respond. His character answered for him.

“Yes,” he said.

Suddenly, a crystal shot up from the light. It was a quartz. A speech bubble appeared above White’s shadow, only containing a drop of water, showing some frustration.

“Why’d you think we’d want quartz of all things?” White’s shadow asked.

Dan felt a bit shaken. He didn’t know exactly where in the timeline they were right now, or who they thought that Dan was. Did they think that Dan was the shadow version of himself? And if they did, did that mean that he was finally matching it?

White asking that implied that Dan himself was the one, in the other world, shooting crystals through the portal. That is impossible, though. How would Dan be in two places at once?

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Dye’s shadow asked.

Music began to play in the background. A soft, nostalgic melody that Dan couldn’t place.

“He thinks we’re different again,” White’s shadow said.

Dan’s character didn’t say anything.

“He still thinks that this is a different place,” White’s shadow said.

Dan was confused. He wondered if he had missed a bit of crucial information that would make sense out of this. Another crystal came up through the light. This time, it was a citrine.

“That is better,” Dye’s shadow said.

He took the crystal and put it away. Dan felt uneasy, watching this event unfold. He felt as though, rather than playing his own character, he was now watching his shadow self in the other realm. He wasn’t in control. Still, Dye and White’s shadow spoke as though Dan had gone back and forth between the realms on his own before, and understood just as little then.

Or, Dan was playing as his shadow. But his shadow was confused. Maybe it wasn’t Dan that needed to change in order to match. 

The cutscene ended, and Dan was able to move his character. The same soft melody played in the background. Dan approached the light and right clicked it. The menu that asked him if he wanted to pass through came up. Here, there were no shields or boundaries. He could enter the light at will.

Just as Dan was about to click ‘yes’, Dye’s shadow spoke.

“Are you going again?” Dye’s shadow asked.

“They won’t listen,” White’s shadow said.

The menu came back up. Dan could either stay or leave.

When he thought about it, the choice wasn’t really his. As much as life is a push and pull of dark and light, of colour and achromacy, one thing always rings true. No matter how long the darkness sticks around, light is inevitable. He could push it up and push it up, expecting to feel ready to receive it at some magical time, but it doesn’t matter. When the light comes, Dan can’t say no to it. He never will.

No matter what, Dan always keeps going. That is what has been true about him for his entire life.

No matter how hard his parents have made things for him, Dan has always tried to make them understand him.

No matter how long Dan spends isolating himself, he always eventually comes back out, seeking.

No matter how hard Dan tries to convince himself that Phil doesn’t want him, that this is the end of everything, he still picks up the call. He still fights for what he wants.

Dan chooses the light this time, because that is what he always does in the end.

-

When Dan gets to the station, he moves his weight from foot to foot to regulate his temperature in the cold. He watches the other people standing here, waiting for the tube to arrive. There aren’t as many as there are during the other hours of the day, but there are more than Dan would have expected. He entertains himself by wondering why they are here, and where they are going. He doesn’t get to think for long before his stomach reminds him of his nerves as it tightens. 

He doesn’t know if Phil will show up, or how long it’ll take before he comes if he does. Half an hour, max. It isn’t a lot to go on, really. Dan is standing outside in the freezing cold waiting for a guy that spent most of the week ignoring his very existence. Dan has stopped thinking of people in those terms, though. He doesn’t like to think of them as “his best friend’s ex” or “his kind-of-ex’s best friend”. Phil was the one that helped him realise how toxic that can be to begin with. It puts everything into black and white, into a monochrome perspective that doesn’t allow for all the different shades and colours to fit. The world is so much bigger than that. People are so much more than that.

Phil is so many things. He is purple and yellow and blue and monochrome. But he is more than any metaphor like that, too, because he is real.

There is always nuance. Dan has to stand his ground when he has been wronged, he has learned that too, but there is a difference with what Phil has been doing because Dan has no idea how this must feel for him. He is still angry, he still feels betrayed. Some part of him still feels scared that Phil doesn’t think that Dan is worth it. 

But Phil is worth pushing all of those thoughts away in order to enjoy whatever comes next.

Dan hopes there is something to enjoy if Phil comes around, at least.

No matter what happens, though, Dan will find his way through to the light somehow.

Five more minutes pass when another tube arrives and a few people get off. Dan scans the people heading towards the escalators and eventually finds the black quiff and the space coat. He hurries forward, stumbling and stupid, until he reaches Phil and grabs a hold of his arm.

Phil’s yelp is so loud, it echoes throughout the station.

They stare at each other for an intense moment. Dan remembers waiting for the tube on another day, after a doctor’s visit, when Phil grabbed his arm to scare him. He remembers Phil feeling his chest and his heartbeat, and how it felt like his hand was reaching right into his chest, taking a shard of his glass heart to keep. He remembers going to get coffee, and how everything between just the two of them truly started on that day.

“Scared me to death!” Phil says, putting a hand on his chest.

Dan doesn’t ask. He sneaks his hand below Phil’s and feels the quick beat of his heart going and going. He can’t make out the blue and yellow of Phil’s eyes in this dreary lighting but he can make out something else. He can make out years of pain and sadness that Dan doesn’t know because Phil hasn’t told him. This time, Dan is the one reaching into Phil’s chest. He picks up a purple shard, considering.

“Sorry,” Dan says. “Your heart is beating really fast.”

Dan expects Phil to push him away, but his hand stays on top of Dan’s. He holds him there. Phil smiles, but his expression is pained. Dan decides to keep that purple shard, if only for a little while.

“That was a pretty lousy pick up line, wasn’t it?”

He lets go of Dan’s hand. Dan pushes it inside his coat pocket, hoping it will somehow keep the feeling of Phil. Dan smiles back.

“So that was a line, was it?” he asks.

They get on the escalators. As they ascend, a rainbow of colour flickers across Phil’s open canvas skin, as the ads on the opposite wall shine against him. Dan is reminded of that change, during the night next to the tube station, when something deeper started to develop between them.

“‘Let me feel’?” Phil grins. “Please.”

Dan hadn’t quite realised just how deliberate Phil has been with their interactions. He is about to think this over when he notices Phil’s smell. They are at the top of the stairs, making their way back to Dan’s flat. There is no citrus or honey. There is that boy smell, the one that Dan might use for himself but seems so unnatural on Phil.

They walk down a cobblestone path lined with naked trees that were filled with yellow leaves only a few weeks ago. The amber surrounds them, but it doesn’t seem as vibrant. They aren’t really talking, right now. They aren’t really connecting. Dan is intentionally not taking in the fact that Phil is here and Phil is Phil because they are in public. If Dan allows himself to feel it all, he won’t be able to resist doing whatever he wants to.

He doesn’t know exactly what that is. All he knows, right now, is that Phil looks sad and smells different. Dan doesn’t really want to hold on to him or kiss him. Most of all, he wants to ask how Phil is feeling. _Really_ feeling. And Dan is scared to, especially when they aren’t at home.

Dan isn’t expecting anything, once they arrive at his building. All he thinks is that Phil isn’t looking at him much. He thinks that Phil might be saving any words for when they go inside. Dan can’t focus on how he feels, himself. He only glances at Phil and hopes that, if Phil catches those glances, they are somewhat reassuring.

Dan doesn’t expect anything, but when they get inside his flat and he closes the door, he realises he expected anything except for what actually happens. He didn’t expect Phil to sit down on his bed and cover his face with his hands. He didn’t expect Phil to jump just when Dan sits down beside him. He didn’t expect Phil to suddenly melt into his arms, face against his chest as Dan holds him. He didn’t expect Phil to cry.

But Phil is crying. The only thing Dan can do is hold him and soothe.

It isn’t a night full of revelations and conversation. Dan knows as little about Phil now as he did before he arrived, except for one thing. Dan knows that whatever has been going on since they saw each other last, it isn’t good. Phil is crying into the front of his shirt in this quiet, restrained way that makes it all the more sad. He is already openly distressed, and he still tries to hold back. 

Whatever they put on when they met up at the station is completely gone for the moment. Phil is open and closed at the same time and Dan has no words to say to this state of him. It isn’t about letting Phil get away with anything. This doesn’t feel like reuniting, or making amends, or starting over. This feels like something broken that has stayed broken for quite some time and now it is in Dan’s arms, all the different pieces of it, and it asks for nothing more than to be held together for just a little while.

Dan can’t deny Phil that. He can’t, no matter how upset he is at him.

There are reasons for Dan to be upset at Phil, but he can’t subject him to any of those reasons when they are like this. Not when Phil is crying, and clinging on, and accepting the faint caress of Dan’s fingertips as the wisp up and down his spine. They aren’t meant to say anything, right now. Phil isn’t speaking and Dan doesn’t know what to ask. In some ways, Phil feels more estranged from him now than he did when they didn’t communicate.

In other ways, this feels like it always does. They understand each other in this quiet way that doesn’t need to be verbalised to be understood. There are touches and looks in place of words, that lead to Phil’s back pushed against Dan’s chest after they have undressed to their underwear and t-shirts in Dan’s bed. Dan holds all the broken pieces of Phil and listens to his breathing as it evens out.

Just when Dan thinks that Phil is about to fall asleep, words come. Dan can hardly make them out, now that Phil’s voice is quiet and raspy from crying.

“I’m sorry.”

Dan feels a tug, from somewhere deep inside. He holds on to Phil a bit tighter. He is reminded of how that worked the last time Phil was breaking. Phil immediately relaxes when Dan holds on to him harder. Dan can’t resist brushing his lips against his shoulder. He closes his eyes and feels a riot inside. It is all so intimate. Phil is literally back in his arms. They don’t have to say it to know that this is not a time for talking, but just for being back in each other’s spaces, whatever that means.

Dan and the purple shards of Phil in his bed, where no honey or citrus can be found.

Dan stays aware that Phil’s mind could change at any moment. The unpredictable way Phil defends himself behind the walls come up when Dan least expect them to. They might as well come up now and snatch Phil away from his embrace.

But they don’t. For now, Phil falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Space Song by Beach House
> 
> Since I last posted, Vivi @cactilads on Twitter posted a beautiful drawing, based on Monochrome. Check it out [here](https://twitter.com/cactilads/status/1211414920706887682) and make sure to support her! Thank you so much, Vivi. You are such a talented artist and encouraging reader. I appreciate you so much. <3
> 
> Now for a few personal notes:
> 
> || Happy new year's eve! These past six months have been incredible as I've been posting this story. I feel so fortunate to have all of this support, no words could ever match up. If you are reading this as a WIP, just know that you are a part of this fic. Your encouragements matter so much. 
> 
> || I thought I'd also take this moment to forewarn the coming end of this story. I don't know just how much is left, as I am not known to estimate word count very well, but I think we have about ten chapters or so to go. It might be more and it might be less, but I thought it'd be good to say this in time so that it won't come as a shock to anyone. And don't worry, I'll let you know before we're at the very end :) <3
> 
> || I hope that 2020 treats you well. You deserve it <3


	62. Chapter 62

It is all a strange blur.

Dan opens his eyes to the white ceiling, angled above his bed. His pillow has been pushed aside, but his head is still supported. The duvet is only covering one half of him. Phil has wrapped himself around him. One arm is tucked beneath Dan’s head. The other is hugging his chest. One of Phil’s legs is tucked between Dan’s. Dan’s arm is wrapped around Phil’s back.

Dan looks down at Phil’s face. He is dead to the world, using Dan’s chest as a pillow. The other half of the duvet covers him all the way up to the neck.

There have been many mornings in Dan’s life where he woke up next to another person, feeling crushed by regret. His craving for intimacy had been momentarily soothed by the nights that came before them, during which he refused to participate emotionally and focused on the physical and only took in the feelings that didn’t hurt. Mornings with Jimmy were often like that. If only Dan had allowed himself to participate, he would have realised that his emotions weren’t dangerous or painful. He could have had good mornings with him.

Regret is not in this room. Despite the confusion and hurt between them, waking up with Phil in his arms doesn’t feel wrong to Dan. They have to get past a lot of things. They have so much to talk about. But there is only peace in Phil’s expression at the moment. His quiff is a bit too long, pushed down over his forehead. His fair skin is blushing pink on his cheeks, flushed due to heat. Dan can’t look at that face and feel like it isn’t the first thing he wants see waking up every morning. He can’t pretend that everything about this isn’t right.

The only thing that worries Dan is that he can’t be sure which version of Phil opens his eyes to him when he awakes. He can’t be sure whether there will be walls, or vulnerability, or sadness, or peacefulness. He can’t know if he will be able to make out the blue and yellow in Phil’s eyes. He can’t know if Phil will be stuck in monochrome. He can’t know if Phil will be out the door as quickly as he possibly can.

The worry doesn’t stay for long. Phil begins to stir soon after Dan woke up. His breathing shifts from the sleep slow long breaths to something more conscious. Dan looks down at his face. Phil’s grip tightens. His eyes do not open before he pushes his face into the crook of Dan’s neck, heat be damned. Dan wraps his arm tighter around Phil’s back, encouraging the shift of position. The quiet of the room feels full. Not by regret, not by fear. There is only the ever present feeling of correctness, of connection. It is easy to disregard any lingering disconnect for now.

Phil’s lips brush faintly against Dan’s neck. A warm breath follows, exhaled onto his skin. Dan lets his fingers travel over Phil’s t-shirt covered side, up to his shoulder, until they settle at the back of his head. Circle patterns and comfort sweep across Phil’s hairline, down along the shell of his ear. 

Lips brushing develops into warm, wet kisses. Dan sighs some affirmation. When Phil kisses his way up to Dan’s mouth, Dan accepts it. He wants it. They have everything to talk about, but for now Dan is in no rush. His body is not a prize for Phil to gain access to after he has said all of the correct things. There is only ease and comfort in these touches. That feeling doesn’t exist in spite of anything. It just is, because it always just _is_ when they are together.

Dan has struggled enough for the past few days. It feels so good, just being like this; held and kissed by this one special person. It feels so good that waves of emotion come brimming right underneath the surface.

Dan’s fingers thread through Phil’s hair as they move. Phil keeps his arms wrapped around him when Dan ends up on his side, face to face with him. For a moment, they pause. They pull back just enough to fully look into each other’s eyes.

There is light and dark in Phil’s eyes. A conflict that Dan has come to know so intimately that he has assigned it to be a personality trait of Phil’s, a metaphor of contrasts and vivid colours, when in reality that conflict may not be something innate. It could be just that; a conflict. Something that pushes Phil back and forth between emotions. Something that he feels he needs to hold back and never show to another person.

The wave of emotion grows until it breaks through to the surface. Phil’s expression changes as soon as he notices Dan’s tightening lips and wet eyes. The conflict is replaced by the vulnerability that is so rare for Dan to see that it still shakes him.

“Dan,” Phil exhales.

He leans back in and Dan clutches on. He responds to the kiss with every fibre of his being. This is right. This is where they should be. But they have a mountain to climb, too. If they stay here, in the middle of the climb and putting off the steeper path, the sense of peace and correctness won’t remain. Dan has fought himself enough to know that the eventual confrontation is inevitable. The intensity of it depends on just how long you let it simmer. Soon enough it will start to boil, and become way too hot to drink.

Whatever they swallow now won’t go down smoothly, but at least it will go down. Dan has to take advantage of this point while they’re here.

He pulls away from the kisses even though he wants more. He looks at the poorly veiled disappointment in Phil’s eyes and it makes him want to cry. He is making the move now. He should be speaking. He should be letting Phil know what the past week felt like for him. But there is a disconnect. It is so stark, so ugly, so real; such a difference from what Dan would have felt if he didn’t feel the need to right the wrongs.

He does feel that need. But the old fears linger, the ones that tell him that Phil won’t want him. Right now, the idea of Phil not wanting him is crushing. He has come far. He knows that those thoughts aren’t entirely reasonable. He doesn’t want a relationship in which he reaches and reaches for someone that is unavailable, only because Dan is too scared to really look inside them.

The repression has already started. Not unlike last year, when he stopped seeing Jimmy right after their confused relationship after him and Lucy broke up, there is a part of Dan that is pushing away everything he has learned about Phil because that is easier than to deal with all of this.

Mum’s crystal flower painting is right behind Phil. Phil must have noticed it. Right now, it doesn’t remind Dan to hold Phil up and be his emerald. Right now, it only reminds Dan of how obsessive and weird he is. It hurts even more now, when all of these thoughts and toxic coping mechanisms come back full force, because Dan knows he can be better. It is so difficult. It is so painful. He wants nothing more than to be able to speak his mind like he thought he could yesterday.

There is a barrier here and Dan wants to break through it. That is not easy to do when you can’t even speak out of fear that you will immediately break down and start to cry once you do.

“I know you want to talk,” Phil says to Dan’s heavy silence. His voice almost breaks on every word.

Dan nods. He is already disappointed in himself for forcing Phil to take the lead, once again. He seems to always control every situation. He shouldn’t have to.

Phil reaches out and pets the side of Dan’s face as a mountain of worry builds up in his eyes.

“Don’t cry,” he whispers.

Immediately, Dan starts to cry. Phil keeps him in the palm of his hand and Dan thinks that maybe they are both a bit broken and maybe they won’t be repaired and maybe they don’t have to be, entirely. He sniffles and attempts to hold back the sobs when Phil kisses him.

Dan pulls away immediately. An inappropriate laugh bubbles up through the tears.

“Don’t kiss me when I’m crying,” Dan says. “I’m not sexy right now.”

Phil is still so close to his face that Dan can’t look at him without crossing his eyes. But Phil laughs and the sound is so easy, such a weight off. Dan clutches on to Phil’s side and lets Phil wipe his tears, before he leans back in and kisses him with a completely different feeling. His breaths grow hot and Phil’s thigh between his legs is suddenly very noticeable. He becomes incredibly aware that he could move his hips just so, to create the slightest wonderful friction.

Phil pulls away with an equally hot breath.

“You’re always sexy,” he says.

It sounds so genuine that Dan can’t even laugh at it. His mind zeroes in on the rushing blood in his veins and every part of his body that is currently touching Phil’s.

“Yeah?” Dan asks.

Every single little sound from Phil is sexy right now. Dan wants him so badly.

“I want to have sex with you,” Phil says as he leans down to kiss Dan’s neck.

Dan doesn’t need to do anything. Phil begins to move his thigh and the rushing blood in Dan’s body centres between his legs immediately. He can’t stop himself from meeting that movement, making Phil aware of just how stiff he is already becoming.

“Phil,” is all Dan says.

His eyes close and he pushes his hand underneath Phil’s t-shirt. He feels that soft, smooth skin and finds himself suddenly craving it. He wants to taste every single part of him, right now. Phil seems to have the same idea as he keeps mouthing every part of Dan that he can reach. They push each other’s shirts off and Phil ends up on top, straddling Dan. He leans down and sucks on one nipple. It almost hurts. His tongue and his lips are so delicate but the way Dan’s body responds is verging on aggressive; sharp like he can’t control it.

“Fuck,” Dan moans through the rush of dopamine as Phil begins to play with the waistband of his boxers.

They push off each other’s underwear in a wanton hurry that makes Dan not even care about the way they stumble and stutter in their movements. He just wants this. Phil, naked against himself. When he feels between Phil’s legs his cock is already fully hard and wet at the tip. Dan wants it in his mouth.

“Yeah,” Phil says, half restrained, as Dan wraps his hand around his cock. “Oh, my God.”

“I want you so badly,” Dan rushes out.

“You have me,” Phil says.

The pause that that sentence creates hurts in a different way than the arousal does. Dan swallows a breath and pushes Phil to lie down next to him. He leans down to take his cockhead in his mouth before that pause becomes a full stop.

Phil’s hips jump slightly at the sensation, but Dan has become so accustomed to those jumpy muscles that he meets it easily, opening his throat for Phil to fuck into. Phil moans as Dan vigorously sucks his cock, goal oriented with his hand jerking off the base as he licks and sucks at the head. They don’t need to be quiet here. Phil grabs onto Dan’s hair and moves his hips in time with Dan until it is over, and Dan’s mouth and knuckles are messy with his cum.

A rush of accomplishment drives Dan to crawl on top of Phil. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before he leans down to kiss him. He is so horny it hurts. He really won’t last long, but neither did Phil. This isn’t really about savouring the moment. All that Dan wants right now is for Phil to make him come because it never feels like it does with Phil.

Phil wraps his hand around Dan’s cock and Dan starts to fuck his fist in quick little bursts.

“Fuck, yes,” Dan moans. “Please.”

“What do you want me to do?” Phil whispers.

He likes being told what to do. Dan groans, hit by all of the possibilities laid out in his mind. It feels odd to say these things out loud, but he wants to.

“I want you to finger me,” Dan says, forcing himself to speak clearly without a stutter.

Phil’s hand travels lower, past Dan’s balls, until he is feeling around between his cheeks. Dan pushes back against the touch. Before long, Dan is on his back and Phil’s face is between his legs. He sucks his cock while he fucks Dan with two fingers. He looks so focused on the task, that it almost makes up half the experience. He is so diligent in how he wants to make Dan feel good. And he succeeds. Dan is panting and moaning and sweating by the end of it, when he finally comes in Phil’s mouth because he was too far gone to remember to say anything.

Phil grins up at him when Dan takes a shocked breath, a noise that means ‘sorry’ or something like it. Dan laughs, watching as Phil kisses the side of his dick and pulls his fingers out.

Apparently, Phil doesn't mind swallowing.

-

They are in a haze, kissing and touching when Dan remembers himself. 

“What time is it?” he asks against Phil’s mouth.

Phil pulls back and presses the phone screen on the nightstand next to the bed.

“It’s twelve,” Phil says, leaning back down to give another kiss.

Dan doesn’t quite meet this one. He jerks his head away and feels his heart start to rush, beating hard. He was supposed to have therapy at twelve. He always does on Fridays, nowadays. He fucking missed his appointment because he was busy fooling around and ignoring his issues with Phil.

“What’s wrong?” Phil asks.

He gets off him before Dan has to tell him to.

Dan sits up, and takes the underwear that they tossed to the end of the bed and puts them on. He throws the other pair at Phil, who looks disappointed but not surprised.

“Dan,” he says, suddenly small and defeated.

Dan puts on a pair of sweats and rolls his shoulders back. He leans onto the back of his desk chair and stares out the window; at the brick wall that seems to be his perpetual fate. He only ever gets so far until he runs straight into it. It is easier to let things go unsaid. But right now, the consequences of those actions are so disgustingly clear. Dan lets everything be Phil, Phil, Phil to the point where he no longer needs an explanation or to care about himself. He really needed that therapy session today, no matter how difficult it would be to tell Susanne about everything that happened this week. Now he won’t be getting to talk to anyone besides the people that are involved in the situation.

Suddenly, Phil is standing next to Dan. Dan doesn’t realise until he feels Phil’s hand on his shoulder.

“Dan,” Phil repeats himself. “What’s wrong?”

“You fucking know what’s wrong, don’t you?” Dan bites back before he can stop himself.

Phil, for some reason, keeps his hand on Dan’s shoulder and says nothing.

“I’m missing therapy,” Dan explains. “Because of you. Because of… this.”

He gestures awkwardly. He has no idea what _this_ is, at the moment, but right now he is feeling angry at himself. Because he let himself and his current distractions get in the way of his life, just like he always does.

“You don’t have therapy on Thursdays anymore,” Dan says, almost conversational, as he is reminded of work yesterday.

At that, Phil’s grip on Dan’s shoulder tightens.

“You have them on Mondays or Tuesdays,” Dan goes on. “Because you changed it so suddenly you couldn’t schedule just one day.”

Phil’s breath is loud, but it tells Dan nothing. He doesn’t want to move his head and look at what Phil might be thinking. Right now, Dan wants to stare at that fucking brick wall and think about how much he hates it. He wants to think about what a waste it is, putting a window right in front of a wall.

But isn’t that what Dan has been doing to himself all his life? And isn’t that a waste?

Dan doesn’t want to waste his life.

“Fucking say something,” he says in exasperation as he stands up from leaning against the chair.

He moves to face Phil. Phil’s hand drops off his shoulder.

He isn’t really looking at Phil. He is looking at just another wall; the one that Phil keeps between them. Dan can’t do anything about it. 

“Well?” he presses.

Phil stares down at the floor. He is only in his pants and a t-shirt. His hair is a mess. 

“What do you want me to say?” Phil asks. “I didn’t know you had therapy.”

“I don’t fucking care about that,” Dan snaps. “Tell me why you changed your appointment. Tell me why you were so scared of seeing me yesterday that you rescheduled several weeks ahead.”

Phil finally looks up from the floor, and the anger in Dan shifts. There is the vulnerability. There is the pain, the sadness. The wall is gone for the moment and Dan feels helpless, trying to meet this person that somehow hasn’t made the same amount of progress that Dan has in this regard. This person that wrote this profound story, that is and was an important part of the progress Dan has made. He wouldn’t have thought that a writer of a story like that could still be so stuck.

“Tell me,” Dan says, holding back from raising his voice.

The walls start to come down as Phil stares Dan dead in the eye and opens his mouth to speak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Lessons by SOHN


	63. Chapter 63

Phil’s mouth shuts. He takes a moment to think. His tight shoulders go down but they don’t relax. He is faking calming down, somehow.

“I didn’t know if you’d still want me,” is what Phil ends up saying. 

He folds his arms over his chest. He looks so small where he is standing in front of Dan in Dan’s London flat, surrounded by tidy-kept monochrome. It is only broken up by a painting Dan never expected to receive. Usually, Phil serves as a burst of colour and contrast in Dan’s studio, but not today.

“Actually, I was sure you wouldn’t,” Phil goes on. “So I definitely wouldn’t be able to stand seeing you when I went to therapy every week.”

Dan doesn’t know this Phil. He thought he knew all of him, the one that the others don’t get to see. Truth is that, while Dan might be seeing more, there are many more pages of Phil to turn. He seems to want to hide things until it is absolutely necessary to share them with others.

“So you did it as a precaution,” Dan says.

Again, Phil surprises him with these deliberate actions. He always has to be one step ahead of everyone else and never takes things as they are. That makes his silence for the past week even more suspicious. Phil thinks of everything, so why didn’t he think of what it would be like if it turned out that Dan was a fan of his work? Or did he think about it, and decided that this is how it was going to play out?

Dan isn’t a fucking character. He is a person. He isn’t going to let another person play with his life.

“Well, what would have happened if I had come in yesterday?” Phil asks. “It wouldn’t have been good.”

Dan sighs. Despite Phil finally saying _something_ , Dan doesn’t feel like he is even close to reaching him yet.

“It’s not that you cancelled yesterday, Phil,” he says with a sigh. “It’s that you did it for several weeks in advance. It felt like being fucking rejected when I saw that.”

Phil bites his bottom lip and looks away, straight at Mum’s painting. Dan wants to shrink for a moment.

“I didn’t think you could see the schedule past this week,” Phil says quietly, still looking at the emerald vase and the amethyst flower.

Right now, that painting is like a mockery of them. Of course, if Phil knew that Dan could see the schedule, he would have waited to reschedule the other appointments. Because that is Phil. He thinks of everything and makes sure that it goes the way he has planned it. 

Does Dan seek these people out? Those that will inevitably try to control him? If Jimmy was like Mum in that Dan was unable to reach his own affection for him when it mattered the most, does that make Phil like Dad? The one that is supposed to take it all on and be reliable but ends up trying to control everything and in doing so loses touch with everyone around him?

Dan is disappointed in Phil like he is with Dad. They are both the people in his life that he should have been able to really talk to, and trust, because no one else in his life is trustworthy. If Mum hurt him so much, shouldn’t Dad have been the better alternative? Shouldn’t Dan have had at least that?

Rather, he is left stranded, because expecting something from someone else is like waiting for a miracle when it comes to Dan’s life.

This is why he keeps it small. This is why he doesn’t stray outside the lines that his schedule allows him to. This is why he should settle for existence, rather than life. That is why he should succumb to the darkness once all hope is finally drained from him.

But that is bullshit. Because Dan chooses light. Every time it comes to him, he follows its path.

Letting Phil treat him however he likes is not light. Dan has to push harder, to make Phil realise that none of this had to happen.

“So, what?” he asks. “Am I just supposed to wait this all out and not ask questions?”

“No,” Phil says immediately, an uncharacteristic sharpness to his tone. “That’s not it.”

The sharpness unlocks a feeling in Dan that he doesn’t want access to.

“It isn’t?” Dan asks. “Why?”

He stares daggers into the purple shards in front of him.

“Because you didn’t plan for it?”

“Fucking stop it!”

At that, Dan is pushed right back into the kitchen with Dad, when he got yelled at for making sense. The feeling Dan doesn’t want access to almost crushes him from the inside. The spectator isn’t around, though. Dan is feeling all of it. Even if it hurts, it somehow feels good to be able to. He isn’t thinking of his life as not being real. He isn’t thinking of himself, or Phil, as not being real. Everything is real, almost uncomfortably so, but at least it is that. At least it is real.

Phil is real and Phil isn’t Dad. Because Phil’s face crumbles. Because Phil looks distraught. Because Phil looks disgusted with himself.

He sits down on Dan’s bed and holds his breath. Faking calm isn’t working anymore. He stares down at his hands, frowning.

Dan sits down next to him. He lets the moment settle. 

He thinks that he is finally seeing the thing that has been buried under all those layers, locked behind all those doors. Dan has never seen Phil get angry like this before, but it oddly seems to suit him.

Phil didn’t mean to the point of yelling. He didn’t mean to take Dan back to feelings he never wants to feel again. But Dan knows his own worth. He refuses to answer to someone that yells at him. He won’t dignify that tone of voice with a response. He won’t be treated like that by anyone, ever again. 

But Phil is still real and Phil is still Phil. Dan loves him. When he is upset, Dan wants to comfort him.

Instead of doing that, Dan sits next to Phil and waits for him to gather himself. 

When Phil sighs, Dan feels ready to speak. Susanne has told him to assert himself. To communicate his own needs. Dan can do that. Maybe not with everyone, but at least he can do it with Phil. Things are always easier with Phil, because they are worth it.

“Please, never yell at me,” Dan says.

Phil rubs his eyes and turns his head to look at Dan. He lets out half a breath. His expression is completely neutral, but it seems put on. Like something he has taught himself to do.

“I can’t handle it,” Dan explains. “I dissociate pretty much as soon as someone raises their voice at me.”

Finally, something else cracks through the neutral expression and Phil’s sadness reveals itself.

“Fuck, Dan-”

“No, I know,” Dan stops him. “You didn’t know. You don’t have to apologise for it. I just want you to know that for future reference.”

Phil nods. He breathes out the rest of the breath.

Within the following silence lies a loudness; something so obviously unspoken that it might as well have been spoken already.

Dan decides to wait again. Whatever it is Phil wants to communicate, it takes him a lot of thinking to get it out. Dan is patient enough to let him think.

Eventually, Phil is done thinking.

“I never had a player tell me what the game means to them,” he says.

It feels even weirder than Dan expected it to, hearing Phil acknowledge who he is.

“Not to my face. No one knows who I am. I never wanted someone this close to me to have played it, let alone be as involved in it as you are.”

It is as if Phil looked straight into a chest full of Dan’s fears, decided to take out all of the worst ones, and throw them in his face. He is in a way saying that they don’t stand a chance, because Dan was wrong for him since before they even met.

“It’s been so fucking stressful recently,” Phil says, covering his eyes with his hands.

Dan doesn’t know what the hell to say because he has no clue what the hell Phil is on about.

“On Friday, when you told me about everything,” Phil says, rolling his shoulders back and finally looking Dan in the eyes, “it was as if the universe was putting the perfect therapy moment out in front of me. Here was a person I cared about, talking about the thing I made, literally cornering me with my worst fears.”

Dan knows what that is like.

“It was just made up to be my big perfect breakthrough moment,” Phil says. “To finally confront my own problems with intimacy. I’m fine telling non-players about the game, mostly, but to tell someone that played it that I wrote it is a different thing. That has never happened, and it has put actual strains on my life. I don’t leave the house apart from going to the office because I’m scared that someone will recognise my voice.”

Phil looks away. His shoulders go tight. He looks embarrassed to admit to it.

“So I feel like I was supposed to have had my big breakthrough moment where I confronted my fears and told you everything regardless of what you may do with that information. To finally go against all the fear I have of not being in control.”

Phil takes a breath.

“But I panicked.”

He releases the breath.

“I failed that test. And then when PJ was so sure you already knew who we were, it made me feel like I couldn’t trust you, or shouldn’t. I completely regressed.”

The blue in Phil’s eyes looks blue rather than grey, in this moment. 

Dan knows what it feels like to fail yourself, and to feel like you’re taking a hundred steps back on your own journey. He knows how much it fucking sucks.

“I guess it just coincided with a bunch of other things that were putting the same sorts of pressures on me,” Phil says. “I was getting ready to face that, and then it turned out that _you_ of all people had this connection to the story. I was taking my time and then I was suddenly forced to do something I hardly even felt ready to do through text, let alone face to face with someone.”

Phil’s eyes well up with tears. As he attempts to blink them away, the strings of yellow appear around his irises.

“And I couldn’t even do it with you,” he says, fighting the tears. “Not even---”

Phil looks away. The emotions are so heavy. 

Strangely, Dan realises that he finally feels calm.

He looks at Mum’s painting and reminds himself of what he really wants. 

Phil is never too heavy for him. Phil is worth it. And Phil must think that Dan is worth it, because he is saying the thing that he is most afraid to say. He is refusing to regress, for Dan. He is coming back into colour, for Dan.

Dan puts his hand on Phil’s, and once he does, the tension changes. It is no longer two forces fighting against one another. Instead, it becomes about both of them, with their struggles that are so similar and so different at the same time. It is tension that is charged, but shared. They can work through this together. 

When the amethyst and the emerald fuse, they shine brighter than all the rest of the crystals.

Phil is entering the storm he normally views from a distance.

The oncoming fire of emotions within him seems to have been defused by Dan’s touch. His shoulders finally relax. He releases a long breath that sounds like it has been held in for longer than just the duration of this conversation. It sounds like it has been held in for years.

“You know that I’d never intentionally hurt you,” Dan says.

Phil swallows.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. It’s just that we thought that about a person before and then that turned into… someone threatening to blackmail us.”

Dan frowns.

“PJ’s ex,” Phil explains. “That’s why he’s around so much. And why he’s suspicious of you.”

“Is it--,” Dan squeezes Phil’s hand, “is it over now? Or are they still--?”

“No.” Phil shakes his head. “It’s over. But it made things really hard for us. PJ is almost as paranoid as I am now. It didn’t exactly make this situation any easier.”

Phil chuckles, and somehow it is a sad sound.

“It felt like I was supposed to tell you last week,” he says. “And when I couldn’t, it felt like I had failed at everything. I had failed myself, and you. I had failed therapy. Like I missed my shot. Like I missed my chance at a happy ending.”

“I get it,” Dan says.

Phil looks at him. For a moment, he looks afraid. As if he had forgotten that Dan was there, and like he should be keeping his walls up still. Like he can’t brave this storm inside this cave after all.

Dan makes sure to look at him with all the compassion he can muster. He is used to the storm. He is used to the cave. He knows how to navigate it now. He can be the crystal, the light, leading Phil’s way. Surprisingly, it isn’t hard to do.

“I’ve felt that so many times,” Dan says. “It’s like life has handed me these opportunities to do things right and to prove myself and I have missed my chance every time.”

Phil nods.

“It’s not true, though,” Dan says. “Life isn’t a story.”

It comes to him so quickly now. This realisation that he has been on the cusp of for so long, finally settling into words.

“It isn’t a beginning, middle, end-thing,” Dan says. “It’s not ‘supposed’ to be one way or another. It doesn’t have these epic moments of victory. Life is just a big load of middle. Things just happen. It doesn’t really mean anything.”

Phil doesn’t look too pleased with that.

“But that’s okay,” Dan says. “I don’t want to live in a story. I don’t want to be a character. I don’t want to be something that people can project their issues onto.”

He squeezes Phil’s hand.

“I want to be a person,” he says.

Distantly, he thinks he can hear the spectator mock him. Distantly, the shadows crowd in. Dan doesn’t care. He’s not scared of them anymore.

He is wary of them, but he isn’t scared.

“And people aren’t like characters, right? We have so much more shit going on than any caricature of a random selection of personality traits could.”

“Yeah,” Phil says. He even smiles.

For a short moment, they seem to be thinking about the same thing. About the meaning of the conclusion of a game that is so personal to both of them, but in different ways.

Maybe, sometimes, even the writer needs to be reminded of his own perspective.

“So it’s not like you missed your big breakthrough moment,” Dan says. “You’re having it right now. You’re talking to me. You’re telling me the things you’re afraid to. You’re telling me the stuff that you wanted to tell me last week.”

Phil releases a breath, leans forward, and rests his forehead against Dan’s shoulder. The purple shards begin to come back together. They begin to take shape.

“Why is this so easy?” Phil asks in a whisper. “Why is it always so much easier than I think with you?”

Dan remembers Jimmy’s words.

“It’s not easy,” he says. “It’s just worth it.”

-

When Dan entered the light, he expected to be teleported back to his own realm. To the bottom of the cave he knows, next to the pit of darkness, surrounded by the real Dye and White.

That is not what happens. Instead, the screen shakes and an eerie sound plays. The noise only grows and grows, until it stops. 

Until everything is quiet.

And Dan’s character in all black is standing alone in an endless screen of white. At first, he attempted to walk to the left. The character walked and walked in a straight path that didn’t change, because everything around him was white and indistinguishable.

Dan kept going, because nothing was stopping him. He didn’t hit a wall. There had to be a reason why he could walk left if this was the case. 

Soon enough, the white started to change. As he walked, it gradually shifted to tones of grey. Dark, darker, yet darker. Eventually, Dan’s character entered pitch black. He could no longer see himself. The only sound was that of echoing footsteps.

Then the sound stopped. Dan figured he had hit the wall now, and could not walk further. He right clicked, hoping that there was something behind the darkness that he could not see. Nothing happened. Dan walked downwards, and the sound of footsteps started again. He hit another wall. Dan right clicked. Nothing happened.

Slightly frustrated, Dan started to walk upwards instead. He hit another wall, right clicked and-

Something happened. 

A menu appeared. It looked like the menu for chests. Thirty six squares meant to hold different items, and this one was full. Every box was occupied by a different crystal.

At the top of the menu was a question.

_Which crystal do you need?_

Dan didn’t have to think about it. He chose the amethyst. He chose to be protected, to have something other than himself to rely on. Once he selected the box containing the amethyst, another box at the bottom right corner appeared. It said ‘continue?’. Dan clicked it.

An identical menu appeared. Thirty six boxes, containing thirty six crystals. 

Identical, apart from the question.

_What is your Core Crystal?_

This took Dan longer. He didn’t know. He only knew what he wanted to be; what type of energy he felt like he wanted to give people. He had been told he was easy to confide in before. But the crystals’ qualities were all so overwhelmingly positive, Dan couldn’t liken them to his own personality.

At the time that he was playing this, Mum was in hospital for detox and Dad was visiting Adrian. Dan was left alone, as always meant to deal with everything by himself.

Dan ended up selecting the Core Crystal he wanted. The emerald. He was probably being very normative, seeing as these crystals had been so important throughout the game. But Dan would rather be truthful to his own experience than to choose any other crystal just for the sake of it. 

Dan pressed ‘continue?’.

Once he did, his surroundings changed. Dan could now see his own character. It was standing in a blank room with an entirely purple background. Dan took a step, but this time, his footsteps didn’t make a sound. Instead, a melody started to play. It stopped once he stopped. Dan played with it a couple of times, starting and stopping just for fun. He went to the left to see if he could get anywhere again, but this time he was stopped by a wall. So Dan decided to march forward.

The music played and got faster and faster. It was an energetic beat, filled with melodies that he had come to know in different parts of the game. The cave melody played, followed by the garden melody, followed by the ‘home’ melody. His character entered a maze, a seemingly never ending pattern of paths to choose. Dan kept going. It took him a while, bumping into dead ends, until he realised that he should simply follow the path he first entered and not turn any corners. The time for putting things up was over. Dan should just walk, and listen to the incredibly satisfying song that was playing, and eventually the purple background started to change.

Gradually, gradually, it faded into green. Dan was leaving the crystal he needed and entering his core. Just as Dan was passing over from the amethyst and into the emerald, his shadow suddenly appeared in front of him. It was wearing all white this time, and impassable.

Dan right clicked him, and a dialogue box appeared.

“The emerald, huh?”

A sentimental melody began to play.

“I thought so. I really thought so.”

Dan was confused. Was his shadow on his own path, walking from the green and into the purple? Was it the opposite of himself; where he needed the emerald while the amethyst was his true core? Did that mean that Dan had failed? Was he not matching his shadow?

“I have walked this path before,” his shadow said. “I have Fallen more times than I can count.”

Dan didn’t understand. Was he Falling, right now? Was this what it had all been about?

“It doesn’t matter, though. Regardless of how many times I Fall, it doesn’t matter because you never did.”

The sentimental melody goes into minor key. Dan felt emotional.

“But you are now! Isn’t it great? Aren’t you happy?”

A pause.

“Heh…”

Another pause.

In the portrait of Dan’s shadow in the dialogue box it smiled, unsure.

“It’s never really what you imagine it will be, right? The end?”

Dan didn’t want it to end. 

Suddenly, he felt like he wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t _ready_. He couldn’t leave this. He wanted another storyline, another puzzle to solve, another problem to work through. Surely, there had to be more. Surely, there had to be things he had missed along the way.

“At least, that’s what I think this is,” the shadow said. “I think this means we’re matching because we’re Falling at the same time. We’re syncing up, or something. I’m returning to the dark and you’re returning to the light. As it should be.”

Dan’s mind was spinning, coming up with what this all could mean. He didn’t come to any real conclusion. 

Dan has come to that conclusion now, finally.

Focusing on one part of yourself doesn’t work. In recovery, what you imagine you will do is to finally find the light. You will finally be happy. You will work towards the good, desperately, leaving the difficult parts behind.

In Dan’s experience, that is how repression begins. That is what restarts the cycle.

True progress is about acknowledging and accepting all of it. The difficulties you have been through, the parts of your psyche that haunt you; they will never change. They will remain a part of your past forever. They may even keep some part of your present. Whatever idea you had before, about where your life was heading, is forever altered. Pretending that what happened didn’t happen, or like the clouds in your mind don’t exist, is not the way forward. The darkness, the shadow, is not the wrong version of you, created to torture you. It is not meant to be erased. It is just like whatever idea you have about the person you should have been allowed to become, had life not gotten in the way.

But it’s all bullshit.

They’re not real. 

They’re imaginary. 

They’re not really _you_.

Dan used to think that matching your shadow meant to make your shadow look like you.

That is not what it means. Matching your shadow means that you need to make the same progress that your shadow has. You can’t keep relying on your life to get back to normal, after it has changed. It will never be that type of normal again. You need to accept that things are different. You can’t keep wishing to feel the same way that you used to. You can’t keep expecting to wake up a different person; the person you are ‘supposed’ to be. 

When Dan realised he didn’t want to die, he wasn’t happy about it. All it meant was that he had to create a life that is worth living, not one that he wanted to end.

When Dan realised that he had been in love with Jimmy, and Haley, and that he still loved Mum, he wasn’t happy about it. He felt like he had missed his chance. He felt like it was too late to enjoy it.

When Dan realised that he didn’t deserve to be treated like he was being treated by Dad, he wasn’t happy about it. He only felt stuck, and like he had somehow created this relationship with him by allowing himself to be abused.

When Dan was young, all he wanted was for someone to tell him that he doesn’t deserve to be treated that way. That he is capable of loving people. That he doesn’t have to kill himself. That he can be in control of his own life.

No one ever told him that, not until Susanne. Not until Phil. Even when they did, it took Dan a long time to truly internalise it. And that sucks. 

It sucks because Dan wants to go back and realise these things sooner. He wants to somehow change what happened and live his life with the perspective that he himself is worth something and that he doesn’t have to bend over backwards for people in order for them to like him. 

He wishes he could have realised that love is not something you can earn sooner.

What sucks is that he can’t go back with these realisations in mind. But he is allowed to feel bad about it, and to be angry. 

“Being a whisperer kind of sucks,” Dan’s shadow said. “But at least it means I met you.”

Dan didn’t understand this part at the time. He didn’t want to know the darkness that lurked in the corners of his mind. He didn’t want to know the spectator, or be pulled from his own experiences time and time again, only subjected to his own life from a psychological distance. 

What it means, though, is that Dan can use these realisations now. He can live his life with this perspective, that he is worth something, and take control. It is not too late. He can’t spend his life wishing he had come to these realisations at a more appropriate time. He can’t undo the past.

Life isn’t a story. There are no arcs with a sensible beginning and a sensible end. It is all mixed up, jumbled. The reason Fall Whisperer ended up meaning so much to Dan is because he needed things to make sense. He needed it just like he used to need an enemy, if not Mum and Dad then his own mind.

In stories, these things make sense. But life isn’t a story.

Dan didn’t have an amethyst to lean on, he wasn’t safe, and he felt trapped by any realisations he made; but now he finally knows that he is the emerald. His heart, his core, is the crystal that will truly lead him forward. But he has to trust it.

Finally, Dan thinks he can trust it.

“Welp,” the shadow said. “Be seeing you.”

Unceremoniously, Dan’s shadow disappeared into thin air. 

Dan began walking again. Music playing and surrounded by green he made his way through the maze that wasn’t really a maze until he reached the other side of the room, where the gradient of grey became light instead of dark.

Light, lighter, yet lighter.

Finally, Dan had Fallen. Finally, he came back to the cave he knew. Finally, Dye and White cheered him on and encouraged him to come back at some point.

Dan couldn’t take in the good feeling when he played it. He focused on it as the end of something. He fucking hates endings. 

Looking back now, Dan understands why he felt that way. He accepts that he had that perspective at the time. 

He is not only capable of righting the wrongs he has done unto others. He is not only capable of going into the path of forgiveness for his parents. He is also now capable of forgiving himself. He is able to stop punishing himself for feeling and reacting and hiding. 

He doesn’t have to live his life out of fear that his mental illness will worsen.

His shadow is not a shadow. His shadow is a part of himself that wanted to protect him but didn’t know how to. That ended up in cries for help, and confusing requests. It made the shadow look like a shadow. 

Dan was traumatised. His brain rewired to a state of expecting more chaos. It wanted to protect him by never letting its guard down. It wanted to protect him by reminding him of these past events, because before they happened he hadn’t expected them. Had he expected these events when they took place, he might have already known how to detach from the situation, and not be hurt by it. But he couldn’t possibly have been able to do that.

Barren, detached, temporary. 

Dad was right. 

Dan kept his life barren, because the only way he knew how to cope was by not allowing anything new into his life. 

He was detached, because in the past, attaching meant that he would get hurt. 

And it is temporary. It is not a permanent state for Dan to live in for the rest of his life. He doesn’t have to keep his life barren. He doesn’t have to detach.

Dan can let his guard down now. 

The ending of Fall Whisperer was a metaphor for moving on but not forgetting. He won’t be angry about the fact that he didn’t realise sooner. He will instead go on with his life with this realisation in mind, because now he can finally use it.

-

On his bed in Dan’s London flat, Dan holds hands with Phil. Phil is resting his forehead against Dan’s shoulder. 

Right now, Dan thinks he knows why Phil likes storms. 

It isn’t about enjoying the chaotic moments, or enjoying the panic. It is about allowing change, and growth. Sometimes, those things cannot happen without a confrontation. Sometimes, those things cannot happen without a storm.

Now that it is settling, Dan can appreciate it.

Phil sits up straight. He looks back at Mum’s painting. Throughout this whole thing, Phil has not been able to keep his eyes off it for long.

It still makes Dan feel nervous.

“Where did you get that?” Phil asks quietly. “I haven’t seen that before.”

“My mum painted it for me,” Dan responds.

It makes him feel so small. So incredibly vulnerable. 

But inside he is stronger. Verbalising it is still difficult, because he feels scared to acknowledge that Mum did something nice. He is so used to being disappointed. And that is okay. These things take time. If Dan can be patient with Phil, he can be patient with himself, too.

The painting has been here like an elephant in the room, begging them to say what has yet to be said.

“It’s the first thing she’s…”

Dan stops.

Phil looks at him. There are no walls, but now there is no sadness, either. Here is a person Dan can meet, that he can talk to. Someone that isn’t hiding, but who isn’t falling apart either.

“It’s the first thing she’s really done for me in a long time that,” Dan swallows, “that made me feel like she knows anything about me.”

Phil lets go of Dan’s hand and instead wraps his arms around him. Tightly. 

Dan tucks his head into the crook of Phil’s neck. He breathes slow breaths in an attempt to soothe the emotions that he has yet to truly resolve. All the way through it, Phil holds him.

“That’s good,” Phil says. “Right?”

Dan nods.

“It really means this much to you.”

Dan nods again.

“Fuck.”

The silence that follows glows green with calm.

“It’s beautiful,” Phil says.

Dan releases a wet laugh.

“Yeah,” he says, leaning out of Phil’s embrace.

They look into each other’s eyes. Dan much prefers dealing with these unresolved feelings in the company of Phil. It isn’t about not being able to get through it himself; he has got through so much on his own. He can do it. He used to think that he had to, because allowing anyone else in would make him a weight on their lives.

It isn’t about having to. It is about wanting to. It is about easing some of the pain while it is here.

The cave can be dark, and cold, and scary. But it no longer has to be lonely.

Dan looks at the painting, at the elephant in the room, and finds himself unable to keep from saying what he has been thinking since Monday. He faces Phil, and decides to finally acknowledge it.

“I can’t fucking believe you’re Seagull.”

A strange smile appears on Phil’s lips. The black quiff and the quirky energy and the contrasts; somehow it isn’t as difficult to accept that it all belongs to the same person.

“I can’t fucking believe you’re Chrome,” Phil says back.

Dan smiles back, and it probably looks just as strange. Who is Chrome, apart from the pixelated Twitter profile picture and the long forum essays and the nonsensical direct messages? Does Phil see any of Chrome in Dan?

Dan thinks for a moment.

“It’s almost like a story, come to think of it,” he says.

Phil shakes his head.

“There’d be too much middle for it to be exciting, probably.”

Dan grins. Phil bumps his shoulder against him. Their fingers intertwine.

“Yeah,” Dan says. “Probably.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Take Your Time (Coming Home) by Fun.


	64. Chapter 64

Phil stays until Dan has to leave for work.

Their shared presence is not only physical but mental, too. Dan allows things to be real, and Phil meets him in that reality. This has been what drew them to one another since they first met, this shared perspective, but now it isn’t fleeting. It doesn’t have any limits. Phil knows who Dan is, fully. And Dan knows who Phil is, fully.

What they have left to learn now is only icing on top of the cake. They have so much to talk about. Despite being on opposite ends of the Fall Whisperer online world, they have so much more in common than Dan knew. He has never even talked to another person in real life that knows as much about the game as Phil does. Obviously.

This is not what they let the few hours they have together be about, though. In their shared reality things take time to process. They are walking at the same pace, towards the same destination. Dan finally has the thing that he envied in Jimmy and Chris’ relationship. So for now, Dan is comfortable with Phil in his arms, talking about nothing and everything between kisses.

But duty calls.

Today doesn’t feel like an ordinary day. It feels like the least ordinary day in Dan’s life, and yet he has to go to work and not spend the evening and the rest of his existence with Phil in his arms. 

Phil goes with Dan to the tube. Then he decides to go with him on the tube to work. Then he decides to walk up the narrow streets to his job, to drop him off right at the door.

If only they could hold hands. 

“Can I come to you after?” Dan asks.

He is afraid to ask. He is afraid of being rejected again. He finds a world of comfort in Phil’s presence, but he fears that the distance is going to paralyze Phil again.

Phil makes a face.

“Probably?” he says. “We have a lot to do tomorrow. We have the-”

He stops himself. Out of habit, Dan is sure.

“The Halloween contest,” he fills in, feeling a strange bubbly excitement in his chest.

For a moment, he feels like a child that is about to receive a present one day before Christmas. Even if he tries to stifle it, this strange giddiness that he has been unable to feel about this situation until now is making its way all the way through him and into his smile.

Even if Phil is scared, he seems unable to not smile back at that.

“Yeah,” he says with a twitch to one eyebrow. “It’s not that we have to do that much, it’s just fun to be around and see what people say when we announce the winners and the prize.”

Dan thinks about Morgan, Jamie, Sam and Mason. He thinks about how unbelievable this situation is. He wonders when, if ever, he would tell them.

“Yeah,” Dan says on an inhale.

Phil takes Dan’s hand then. They are standing in a secluded area behind the building, and the touch is discreet enough, but it still feels bold. Dan squeezes Phil’s hand. He doesn’t want to let go.

“You should come,” Phil decides. “After work.”

“If it’s weird--”

“I’d be checking your tweets and forum activity anyway.”

Now it is Dan’s turn to make a face.

“What?”

It sounded so genuine coming from Phil that Dan doesn’t linger on the spectator’s idea that Phil said it to mock him for long.

“Nothing,” Phil grins. “I mean, I know it’s you now.”

Dan rolls his eyes.

“I haven’t posted jack shit since I found out about you,” he says. “It’s not like I’d do it tomorrow either. It’d be weird, right?”

There’s a torn twist to Phil’s smile.

“Maybe,” he says. “It’s just fun to read some players’ opinions, is all.”

“‘Some players’?” Dan repeats.

Phil shakes his head. His face goes into a soft pink.

Dan has to hold back not to laugh in his face. The bubbliness in his chest is almost suffocating at this point. When he thinks about how he was part of the stream, and working alongside all of the Fall Whisperer creators, it still feels like an odd dream. He can’t comprehend the fact that Seagull told him that Dan was ‘part of the plan’. He has hardly been capable of truly internalising it.

But Seagull didn’t tell him that. Seagull isn’t just a Twitter character. It was Phil.

Dan grins. He might not be able to make sense of it, but he can still tease Phil.

“Are you playing favourites, Phil?” he asks. “Really?”

Phil’s pink face goes pinker.

“Shut up,” he says. “Your mum’s playing favourites.”

“I bet she does,” Dan says back. “But that is besides the point.”

Phil does a face then. It reminds Dan of when they met at Phil and Chris’s party - the first time they met outside the clinic - when Phil put a stop to Jimmy joking at Dan’s expense. Even the first time they had a real conversation, Phil stood up for Dan.

“I’m joking,” Dan supplies. “It’s fine.”

Thankfully, Phil doesn’t lean into it.

“And I don’t play favourites,” he says instead. “I just read as much as I can.”

Dan gives him a challenging stare. As always, Phil doesn’t challenge him back. He just grins his playful grin and tilts his head to the side as if he is looking at a small, excitable puppy.

“You’re gonna be late for work,” Phil says before Dan can think of a clever retort.

“Fuck work,” Dan grunts.

“Kiss me,” Phil says.

It isn’t a question, but if it was, Dan would say yes.

He glances over Phil’s shoulder. The people passing aren’t looking at them, and if they were, they would notice they were holding hands anyway. Dan takes a quick look behind himself for good measure even if he knows that it is an alley that leads to a dead end.

Dan bounds forward so quickly and so suddenly, his lips to Phil’s, that their noses knock against each other. It would be a painful ordeal if it weren’t so funny. Dan puts his hand over his mouth and swallows his growing laughter as he watches Phil pinch his glabella and frown, his pink cheeks now red.

“I said kiss me, not head butt me,” Phil complains, but he begins to smile.

“Sorry,” Dan wheezes behind his own hand.

Phil grabs a hold of Dan’s wrist and gently tugs the hand away from his face.

“Stay still,” Phil says.

Even if Phil is the one that has to tilt his head up those few centimetres, Dan feels absolutely small and weak in the knees as Phil kisses him while holding on to Dan’s wrist to make sure he doesn’t move. It is pretty hot. It would be very hot if Dan didn’t have to go to work, preferably five minutes ago. 

It is only a light peck but Dan smiles from ear to ear when Phil pulls back and lets go.

“Come to mine after work,” he says, matching Dan’s smile.

“Are you sure?” Dan asks.

“Yeah,” Phil says. “If you don’t come I’ll head butt you.”

Dan giggles.

“Come to mine after work,” Phil repeats.

His thumb runs an absentminded line along the inside of Dan’s wrist. It feels like a full-body shudder.

“Okay,” Dan answers.

It is ridiculous how much they keep stalling. They even stall for three more minutes, just to exist in their shared reality for a little longer.

-

Dan doesn’t exactly feel present during work, but it is in a completely different way than he did yesterday. He is thinking about what he talked about with Phil. He is thinking about what Phil said. He is wondering if he should have asked him more. He is thinking about Seagull. He is thinking about what Phil thought of him, when he was speaking to him as Chrome.

He isn’t agonising. That is the difference. Even though his heart is green Dan doesn’t feel a complete calmness. He still has things he wants to talk about with Phil. The calm he finds is in the fact that he will; he will talk to Phil about these things and even though he is scared that Phil could pull away again he doesn’t let himself spin that worry out of control.

Dan knows himself well by now. He knows that he overthinks because he has spent his life around unpredictable people. He has spent several years with an unpredictable mind. It is so hard to trust that things are going to be okay. It is so hard to trust that there isn’t chaos on the horizon. But, Dan knows that convincing himself that the worst will happen is the most unhelpful thing he can do. He won’t ask himself for the impossible. He can’t ask himself not to worry. But he can approach the shadow in his mind now. He can reassure it, because now he doesn’t resent it. It is protecting him the only way it knows how to. Dan just needs to redirect it, step by step.

On his way to Phil’s after work, Dan takes his phone up and begins to draft an email to Susanne. He apologises for missing his appointment earlier today. At first, that is all that it is meant to be, but then the words start to flow. He finds himself explaining everything he has gone through with Phil for the past few months. He talks about Jimmy. He goes more in depth about his online life, and what it means to him. He explains Phil’s connection to all of that, and how he hadn’t known about it until this week.

He doesn’t have time to finish it once he has arrived at Phil’s station, so he saves it for later. Dan won’t miss next week’s appointment. He could explain it all during that session. But that idea is daunting. There is so much to explain. There are so many parts that Dan wouldn’t be able to verbalise in the way that he wants to.

It feels good to have a solution. His mind doesn’t get stuck on the problem, or to his anxiety surrounding the fact that he will have to spill his guts to Susanne about something he is still coming to grips with himself.

The narrow streets between the buildings are glowing with amber. Although Dan prefers a rainbow, although he prefers purple, he won’t resent this light anymore. It is still light. It is still leading his way.

-

When Dan gets to Phil’s flat, he is surprised to be greeted by Chris after he knocks.

Chris looks like he usually does. He has his glasses on, he is wearing sweats and a hoodie, his hair is a mess. Dan only has to take one step inside to notice the light from the TV in the otherwise dark flat. Jimmy is not around. Chris is up at one in the morning by himself, playing video games. Dan hopes that everything is okay.

As Dan takes off his coat, he glances at Chris’s uneven smile and decides to ask.

“Is everything okay?”

Chris nods. It is tight and it is quick and it is probably not genuine.

“Sure,” he says.

Dan follows him into the living room. He lets the silence speak for him.

“I mean,” Chris says, “Jimmy’s at his parents’ house and I miss him. But I’m fine.”

“Okay,” Dan says. “Do you want company?”

He doesn’t really want to keep Chris company. He wants to go in Phil’s bedroom and soothe the shadow, the spectator, that is starting to push his head under the water. It just wants to check. It just wants to make sure that Phil is really there.

“That’s okay,” Chris says. “I’m going to bed soon anyway. If PJ left me any room.”

“Is he fully moving in?” Dan asks.

He wants to ask if Jimmy knows that PJ is sleeping in Chris’s bed. But that's none of Dan’s business. Not right now.

“Maybe?” Chris asks. “Hopefully. When I find a place.”

Dan nods.

“You want to see Phil now, don’t you?” Chris grins.

It is probably ridiculous that Dan goes red in the face any time someone acknowledges the fact that they’ve got it bad for each other. He crosses his arms inside the pocket of his black hoodie and lets out an awkward laugh in response.

“Is he sleeping?”

Chris glances at Phil’s bedroom door, as if that will give him the answer.

“Reckon so,” he says.

There is a strange look in his eyes that Dan doesn’t want to think about.

“I guess I’ll just go check,” he says.

It has been a long day. Dan is tired. He feels under control, but his need to sleep is starting to tear down his defenses.

“Sure,” Chris says. He flops down on one of the sofas and grabs the controller. “Good night, Dan.”

Dan thinks of another night, when him and Chris were alone in this flat. He thinks about how different he felt at the time. He was so lost, and so desperate, the night that he slept in Phil’s bed for the first time.

At this point, Dan doesn’t exactly feel found. He is still searching. But there is a sense of calm in that. There is a sense of adventure rather than fear moving him forward.

“Good night, Chris,” Dan says.

After Dan has entered Phil’s bedroom, he closes the door quickly and quietly behind himself. He puts his bag down next to the desk and looks at the lump of Phil beneath the covers. The duvet is following his shape, slender and beautiful even as it is being obscured by those blue and green covers.

The spectator is not gone but Dan disregards it. He takes off his jeans, and his hoodie, and sits down next to Phil only wearing a white t-shirt and boxers.

Phil stirs as soon as he notices the movement. 

“Hi, Phil,” Dan says as quietly and soothingly as he possibly can.

He doesn’t want to scare him.

Phil’s eyes open but he seems unseeing in the dark, as he pulls a hand out from beneath the covers and feels the space next to himself. He finds Dan’s arm quickly, and once he does, he turns around to face it. He pulls Dan’s arm against his face, sleep weak and adorable.

“Dan,” he says.

Dan pushes up the covers and goes beneath them. As Phil practically glues himself to his side, Dan realises that he is fully naked.

There is something domestic about that, about Phil being sleepy and naked and cuddling into Dan with no other intentions.

There is something even better about when Phil pulls at Dan’s shirt and boxers, willing them off. There is something wonderful about how, when Dan’s clothes are off, Phil remains just as dead set on cuddling as he was before.

This bedroom and Phil smells like honey and citrus tonight.

It isn’t until Dan noses his way to Phil’s lips for a kiss that the mood changes. That is when Dan’s breaths go heavier and Phil’s body against his goes into another type of softness, another type of domesticity. Phil’s dick is flaccid against Dan’s hip but as Dan opens his mouth for his tongue there is not doubt in his mind that Phil’s intentions have changed, too.

Dan is half hard when Phil palms his dick. He goes slowly, massaging the base and pulling the foreskin up and down with the movement as he breathes hot breaths against Dan’s mouth.

“I was scared you might not be here.” Dan doesn’t know why he says it. 

It isn’t appropriate for the moment, really. The silence had only previously been broken by held back moans of pleasure.

Phil stops moving his hand, but he keeps his hand on Dan’s cock.

“I get that,” is what he ends up saying.

For a moment, Dan thinks that that will be it. He thinks that Phil will start moving his hand with more intent, and that they both will forget that Dan said anything.

That is not what he does.

“I’m sorry,” Phil says. His forehead is touching Dan’s. Their eyes are closed. “I’m so sorry I pushed you away when I knew that you’re…”

A pause.

“Different,” Phil concludes. “You’re safe.”

It gets to Dan, in his sleep vulnerable state, being subjected to the word that Dan has used to describe what Phil feels like to him. Right now, that is exactly what Dan feels. It is a scary feeling almost, but Dan feels inclined to dive straight into it.

“It’s okay,” Dan says. “I know why you did it now. It makes sense.”

Phil leans his head back just enough for them to be able to look into each other’s eyes. Phil’s eyes are urgent, flicking from one of Dan’s eyes to the next, down to look at his lips. Dan puts his hand on top of Phil’s on his cock and runs it along the shaft. He feels it in his spine.

“It makes sense,” Dan repeats. “It hurt. I wish you would have said something sooner. But it makes sense.”

There is something behind Phil’s eyes in the dark that Dan is starting to get to know now. It is Phil’s darkness which is so similar to Dan’s and so different at the same time. That darkness breaks up into light and Dan knows why. 

In recovery, the people close to him have all agreed that the part of Dan that is ill is insane. That it doesn’t make sense. That it shouldn’t ever get to have a voice.

On the contrary, Dan’s shadow actually makes a lot of sense. So does Phil’s. They are emotional and unpredictable and triggered by specific kinds of fear, but given their pasts and their presents they still make some sense. The trouble isn’t that they have a voice, but that when things like these happen, they become the only voice.

Dan isn’t saying that the voice is right. He is just saying that it isn’t wrong. He doesn’t resent that part of Phil. He couldn’t for the life of him resent any part of Phil.

That is what brightens the darkness from Phil’s eyes in this moment.

“Dan,” Phil breathes out.

Dan meets him in a kiss and rolls on top of him. Phil clutches at Dan’s back and spread his legs for him. The darkness covers them and all they are going for is feeling. Dan groans into Phil’s neck as he humps softly against Phil’s hard cock.

Phil’s hands end up in Dan’s hair and his legs wrap around Dan’s hips. As he positions himself underneath him, the head of Dan’s cock catches at his hole. Dan can’t stop himself from thrusting, even if his cock slides up right alongside Phil’s dick again. He can’t stop the reaction, and he doesn’t think he wants to, either.

Phil doesn’t say anything. He reaches for the drawer beside the bed, opens the top one, and pulls out a small bottle of lube and a condom wrapped in plastic. He pushes some lube onto one hand and pushes it between them, smearing their cocks at the same time. The easy slide is delicious.

When Phil takes Dan’s hand, the condom is in the palm of his hand. He pushes it onto Dan’s.

“Do you want to…?” he asks against Dan’s mouth.

Phil’s lube covered hand goes lower. Dan feels the back of it against his balls as Phil pushes some inside himself. Dan is usually the one that asks for things when they are like this. Phil likes to be told what to do.

That is hot in its own right, but Dan is leaking precum simply from knowing that what they are about to do is because Phil wanted to, because Phil suggested it. 

Although they are panting, sliding their cocks against each other, Dan feels the slow of it more than the rush. He finds himself savouring this. He finds himself remaining in the moment.

“Fuck,” Dan says, “yes. Fuck yes.”

Phil breathes a laugh. It sounds like relief. Dan kisses him. He wants to kiss away any insecurity Phil may have.

“Put it on me?” Dan asks, pushing the condom back against Phil’s hand.

It is more sexy than awkward, even though Phil drops the condom between them at his first and second attempt to roll it onto Dan’s cock. The third time, it goes right on. It fits perfectly. They are different in size everywhere but there, it seems.

Phil is the on that aligns the head of Dan’s cock against his hole. He breathes hard. Dan can feel how hard he is against his stomach, as a load of precum slides against Dan’s skin.

“Good?” Dan asks.

Phil keeps Dan in place between his fingers.

“Yeah,” Phil says on an inhale.

Dan looks straight into the gorgeous monochrome of Phil as he pushes inside until he bottoms out. He is wet and tight and warm and his face is the picture of pleasure, of sex, of desire.

The moans coming from Phil are different from what Dan has heard before. They are still being quiet, knowing they aren’t alone in the flat, but Phil lets out soft noises at every one of Dan’s slow thrusts. He is practically shaking on top of Phil. Going slowly is just as much about Dan getting used to the feeling enough to not come right this moment as it is about Phil adjusting to the feeling.

“Fuck me,” Phil breathes. He never talks this much in bed. “Fuck me harder.”

The insecurities are being set aside, as the feeling of this is too great to make space for any of that at the same time. Dan can’t help his smile as Phil sinks his teeth into his jaw, softly, softly.

“In a moment,” Dan gets out.

The hold of Phil’s legs around Dan’s waist goes harder, pushing Dan deeper inside, covering Dan’s throbbing dick with that wet tightness. Dan feels it everywhere, a tingle in his shoulder and at the end of his spine, the beginnings of the orgasm he is about to have.

“Why?” Phil asks.

“Because,” Dan struggles, “-fuck. I’m gonna come.”

Now it is Phil’s turn to laugh. It is sexy and confident and just patronising enough for Dan to get turned on by it.

“I don’t care,” Phil whispers. “I want you to.”

Phil means it. Dan can feel it. He pulls out halfway and thrusts harder inside. Deep and tight and the groan from Phil is so guttural that Dan can feel it vibrate against his chest.

Phil’s hand comes between them, wrapping around his cock.

Dan thrusts in hard again. One, two, three times until they find a rhythm. Phil rocks with him, pulling Dan’s hips down through the hold of his legs, as his hand flies over his own cock. There is a wet slapping sound coming from between them.

The beginnings of Dan’s orgasm is reaching a critical state.

“Fuck, baby, you feel so good.”

It is embarrassingly genuine. He holds on to Phil’s shoulders. He is simply moving with the rocking of Phil’s body now, with the force of the calves that are crossed over the small of his back.

“Yeah,” Phil says. “Are you gonna come?”

There is that hint of something patronising in his voice again. Dan feels it like a horny whoosh swooping through his stomach.

“Mmh,” Dan struggles. “Yeah. I’m gonna come, baby.”

“Please,” Phil groans back.

They are all heat and wetness and mouths sticking to any piece of skin they can find as they fuck and pant and moan until it is literally impossible to keep from coming. When it happens, Dan can’t stop the blunt force of his thrusts as his pleasure reaches its peak.

“Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God” is all Dan hears from Phil, over and over again.

Dan doesn’t realise that Phil is coming until he regains control of his body and there is wetness spilling between them. Phil is squeezing out every last drop.

Dan pulls out and they stare into each other’s eyes. Phil’s breath is still evening out. Dan can feel his heart hammering against his chest.

“I love you,” Phil says.

Dan pushes back inside. Phil flinches. He feels so good. He is so open for him to fuck into.

“I love you,” Dan says.

He slips back out and they kiss. After a moment, Dan can feel Phil’s body shake against him. At first he thinks that he is crying, but when Phil turns his head to the side Dan realises that it’s laughter, bursting out of Phil.

Dan can’t feel anything but pure elation as he joins him in that ridiculous laughter.

“I wasn’t gonna say it now,” Phil complains, once he regains some control of his breathing.

Dan rolls to lie beside him. It is easy to pull the condom off his shrinking dick. He ties it and keeps it in his hand.

“When were you gonna say it?” Dan asks, stupidly. “Did you have a plan?”

Phil rolls his eyes. Without a word, he grabs the tied condom out of Dan’s hand and throws it in the bin beside Dan’s side of the bed. There is affection growing inside of Dan’s chest, one that he didn’t think could possibly grow any larger. There is something about Phil just taking it, without a word, and tossing it for him.

Phil goes back to his side of the bed and relaxes against the pillow.

“I just didn’t think getting fucked good was gonna be the thing that pushed it out of me,” Phil says.

It is so ridiculous now that Dan should laugh, but instead Dan feels something like some proud accomplishment.

“I fucked you good?” he asks.

He is blushing in spite of himself. Phil grabs Dan’s face between his palms and gets that look in his eyes again, the one that treats Dan like an excited puppy.

“You fucked me good,” he grins.

The amusement completely fades away and changes into something different. Something that feels solid and strong, simply existing between them. It glows like purple and green, but there is monochrome too. 

“Is it lame if I say I’ve already known it for a long time?” Phil asks.

“I’ve known it, too,” Dan says. He thought it only days into their romantic relationship. “And yeah, it’s lame.”

Phil smiles. He strokes Dan’s cheeks with his thumbs.

“I really love you,” he says.

His voice is low this time. Dan looks at Phil, really looks at him. At his messy bedhead and his pretty mouth and his round, urgent eyes. It comes from the very core of his being, when he says it this time.

“I really love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Songbird by Fleetwood Mac


	65. Chapter 65

When Dan wakes up, Phil is on one side of the bed while Dan is on the other.

Their calves still touch. The bed doesn’t allow for complete personal space unless you really try for it. Dan turns to lie on his back, just to look at Phil.

All it takes is that soft dip in the mattress when Dan moves for Phil to roll over and search, unconscious. His arm ends up thrown across Dan’s chest. Dan moves. He extends his arm to fit under Phil’s head and Phil curls into his side. He noses at Dan’s shoulder and reaches up, hand settling at the nape of Dan’s neck.

If Phil is waking up, he isn’t making a show of it. He keeps breathing steadily. The only signs of consciousness is the delicate pattern he is drawing by the fingertips, over the hair on the back of Dan’s head.

Just like yesterday morning, this feels right. This is the first thing Dan should see every morning. Like yesterday it isn’t in spite of anything, but it does feel easier. He isn’t wondering which version of Phil will open his eyes to him. He still thinks the thought, but it passes. Apparently, if Dan lets them, thoughts can just pass through his mind without making an impact.

Dan reaches for his phone next to the bed and opens the drafted email he started working on last night. He skims what he wrote down. It is a bullet point list, explaining the succession of all these past events. Dan taps the blank space under the first bullet point, _Reunited with Jimmy_.

He starts to write. To explain the details of their relationship; where they had left off last year and why it mattered. He explains the feelings of guilt he had, because of Lucy. The words just seem to come, once he has started. Dan usually only writes for the sake of the forum. He finds the intricacies of Fall Whisperer and details them to anyone that is willing to listen. This is different to that. This makes things slot into place in Dan’s mind. It is removed from the abstract, far off, disbelieving part of his brain and into something more sensible.

Journaling is the first tip on any website Dan has been on to find solutions for his overactive brain. He never wanted to do that. He was scared of making his thoughts real. He doesn’t have to be scared, because that is exactly what he wants, isn’t it? He doesn’t want to detach. He wants what is real.

Dan adds a note, explaining that as well. He saves the new draft and sighs.

Phil kisses his shoulder. He must have woken up without Dan realising.

“Hi,” Dan whispers.

“Mmh.”

Phil looks up into Dan’s eyes. Nothing is really happening. Phil is sleepy and cute but Dan’s heart is bursting. His mind is repeating _I love you, I love you, I love you_.

_I love you_ and you’re here.

_I love you_ and you’re mine.

It doesn’t feel like the sad desperation Dan is used to. Dan is enjoying these thoughts. He grabs them, lets them remain in his consciousness, and he keeps them there.

Whatever Phil sees in Dan’s face at this moment, it makes him smile. It makes something wicked paint his eyes’ expression.

“Call me baby,” he says.

Dan sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and squints.

“Is that an on demand thing?” he asks.

Phil shakes his head.

“No. I just know you want to.”

Dan snorts.

“How do you ‘know’ that?”

Phil pulls his hand away from the back of Dan’s neck and strokes his cheek. Then that wicked thing gets stronger and he takes a hold of Dan’s nose. Dan is too shocked to really do anything about it, so all he does is start giggling.

“It’s this,” Phil says, pinching Dan’s nose. “This little guy says everything.”

“Shut up,” Dan laughs and finally manages to swat Phil’s hand away.

Then Phil smooths a thumb over one of Dan’s eyebrows.

“And these,” he insists. “These start jumping all over the place when you’re thinking.”

Phil’s smile goes softer. He smooths his palm over the side of Dan’s face.

“I sound really attractive,” Dan says, sarcasm dripping from every word.

“You are,” Phil grins.

Dan is powerless against the way Phil keeps insisting that he is attracted to him in his most unattractive moments. He needs to change the subject.

“I should probably get you another nickname, anyway.”

“Why is that?” Phil asks.

Dan turns his head only slightly, to kiss the inside of Phil’s wrist.

“Because ‘baby’ turns you on too much,” he whispers.

He deliberately makes his voice go deeper, gruffer. Dan can feel the impact it has by the way Phil’s toes curl against his shin.

“Does not,” Phil argues.

When Dan’s eyebrow jump this time, he notices it himself. Phil smiles a big, victorious smile. Dan is not going to give him that. He is not going to acknowledge it, even though Phil knows that Dan noticed it this time.

“Does too,” Dan insists instead. “Tell me one time I called you baby and we didn’t end up having sex.”

“Tell me one time we’ve hung out since our first kiss that we didn’t end up having sex,” Phil, to his credit, shoots back.

Dan doesn’t really have anything to say to that.

“Correlation, not causation,” Phil concludes.

Dan squints at him again. This time, he notices that his nose scrunches when he does. He really never realised he was this expressive.

“Okay, _baby_ ,” Dan teases. “Don’t get hard.”

Phil laughs, unimpressed. Dan is going to have to step it up a notch.

“Don’t think about my mouth on your cock,” he says.

Then he licks the inside of Phil’s palm, so faintly that it doesn’t get to be gross.

“That’s unfair,” Phil whines.

There is definitely something more than banter in his tone now. Something turned on.

“Tough luck,” Dan says. “You want that, don’t you, baby?”

He turns to lie on his side and slides his thigh between Phil’s legs, pushing up against his soft balls.

“I think this was your intention all along,” Phil mutters, but he grinds against Dan’s thigh despite the put-on annoyance.

“Wow, Phil, you’re a genius,” Dan grins. “How strange that I would have an ulterior motive here.”

Phil pushes his lips against Dan’s. It’s wetter and more forceful than the first kiss of the day usually is. Dan loves it.

“Call me baby,” Phil says again.

Dan’s stomach swoops. He feels between Phil’s legs, and draws a finger along his shaft.

“Baby,” he whispers.

Phil breathes a laugh.

“Maybe it’s a bit of causation,” he concedes.

“Maybe I don’t really want to change your nickname,” Dan whispers.

Phil goes on top of him. They start the day the same way that they ended the night.

-

They get dressed in Phil’s excessive “stay at home” wardrobe. Phil puts on a pair of grey joggers and a white t-shirt. He has his back to Dan while Dan puts on the green sweats Phil lent him. They are a bit tight over the calves, and probably the ass, but Dan decides to not care. Not when he wears a big, flowy night shirt on top, that covers him to mid thigh.

It is so out of the ordinary to Phil’s wardrobe that Dan is convinced it didn’t originally belong to him without thinking too hard about it. He doesn’t ask Phil who it used to belong to, either. He doesn’t want to ask a question that he isn’t ready to handle the answer to.

Just as Phil turns around, Dan grabs his backpack and freezes.

“Fuck,” he says.

Phil glances at Dan’s hand.

“What’s wrong?”

He says it quickly, like he did yesterday morning. To the point. Dan kind of likes that.

“My meds,” Dan sighs. “Fuck it. I have to go home and take them.”

It isn’t the end of the world, but it is annoying as hell. 

But Phil giggles. Dan frowns.

“What?”

“Check your bag.”

Dan sighs.

“I know I didn’t pack them,” he rants when he opens it up. “We decided I’d sleep over right before I went into work. I wouldn’t--”

A rattling sound stops Dan from continuing. He feels around the bottom of the back pack, and finds the two bottles he usually keeps in his cabinet.

“--Maybe I would,” Dan finishes, confused.

Phil giggles like that again. Dan smiles at him.

“What is it?” he asks.

“I might’ve packed them for you,” Phil grins. “Just in case.”

At first, Dan feels that thing that he does when Phil is being sweet and thoughtful. Then that feeling takes a sharp left.

It isn’t that serious, but Phil doing this is reminiscent of how deliberate he is. How much he decides for other people, in a way, even if that isn’t his intention. It is that small kind of control that Dan bristles at being subjected to, even if it isn’t that serious.

Phil notices the change of Dan’s mood, thankfully.

“Are you okay?” Phil asks. “Did I pack the wrong ones?”

Dan shakes his head.

“No, it’s not that,” he says.

Phil shrinks in the silence that follows. Dan feels bad. Dan feels bad, but he has to say what he is thinking.

“I’m---,” he stalls, thinking of how to word this. “This isn’t that big a deal. Okay? I just have to say.”

Phil nods tightly, as if he is waiting to be reprimanded. Dan doesn’t want to be that kind of person, the one that gives Phil a speech every other second. But this is important to him.

“I just,” he shrugs, “I just wish you would have asked me to bring them instead of doing it without telling me. I would’ve brought them if you had asked.”

“Oh,” Phil says.

There’s the tiniest question mark at the end of that sound.

“It just feels like your way of taking control,” Dan says. “Not that you’re taking that control away from me, really, but… Just. Sorry if I’m way out of line.”

He is feeling nervous, looking at that neutral, learned expression on Phil’s face.

“I know you’re trying to be less in control,” Dan says. “So, I guess, I want you to tell me you’re going to do things before you do them. Not like, everything, but stuff like this.”

Phil is quiet. Dan reaches out and takes his hand. He squeezes it. He doesn’t want there to be any animosity between them, but he would rather talk to Phil about this when what he did wasn’t a big deal than to have it grow into something more.

Phil melts at the touch, as he always does. 

“Do you get what I mean?” Dan asks.

Phil nods.

“Yeah,” he says. His cheeks are pink. “I guess I just thought… that I was doing something nice.”

“I know,” Dan says. “It’s okay. You didn’t know, alright?”

Phil tries to smile, but he can’t. His eyes look so sad.

“Hey.” Dan moves his fingers up Phil’s arm. “I’m not angry. You didn’t do anything wrong. I just would rather tell you than feel weird about it. Communication, right?”

“You’re not angry,” Phil repeats.

He narrows his eyes with suspicion.

Dan smiles. “I’m not angry.”

“Okay,” Phil nods. Some type of relief is visible in his face, but he still doesn’t smile. “I’ll remember that.”

It hurts to see Phil so affected by this. Dan almost wants to take it back, but he won’t. He would have done it, had this been a few months ago, but then, Dan wouldn’t have taken it up in the first place at the time.

Phil leans in. He pushes his lips to Dan’s and cradles the back of his head. Dan feels him in that kiss, the person that lives behind these walls. He is like Phil, but more emotional. He is scared of making mistakes. He is used to anger.

That is not something that Phil has told Dan yet. Dan just feels it. Just like Phil hasn’t told Dan that he is best comforted by touch; it doesn’t have to be said, or explained, for Dan to know.

When Phil pulls away, there is a hint of a smile on his face.

“I’m proud of you,” he says.

Dan bites his bottom lip. His heart twists and the spectator asks him not to accept that. It tells him that he shouldn’t feel proud of something that other people do without any of the extra effort.

It might be hard to fully accept it, but that doesn’t mean that Dan won’t try to. The hand on the back of his head moves to cup his jaw. Phil’s gaze is searching, assessing, but it doesn’t ask for anything Dan can’t give. Dan can’t give much to a statement like that yet. But Phil looks at Dan and his pain as if he knows it, personally.

“I love you,” Dan says.

It almost hurts his heart, saying it during such a vulnerable moment.

“I love you, too,” Phil says, and finally his real smile pokes through the barrier.

Dan smiles his real smile back.

It’s not easy, but it gets easier. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

-

They get the morning to themselves. Themselves, and Chris, and PJ.

It seems as though PJ thinks today is a big day. He offers to make pancakes for breakfast and he smiles brighter than Dan has seen him do for a while. Chris isn’t in as low of a mood as he was last night. The four of them sit on the sofas while not watching whatever is on the telly. The pancakes turned out to be delicious, as well as the coffee. This morning is a morning during which Dan feels content. He has the person he loves by his side and nice people surrounding him. He hasn’t had that in this way before. Even if he did, he wouldn’t have truly let it sink in. He has always been too scared of losing what good he has to enjoy it while it lasts.

That isn’t the case anymore. Him and Phil don’t touch in front of the others but it is mutual. The connection they have is instead exchanged through glances. It is powerful enough for that. It always was. Dan thinks back on Thursdays at the clinic when Phil sat on the red armchair next to the potted plant as they made faces at each other. He couldn’t have guessed that that was how he would meet the person he loves, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

After breakfast, Dan takes a shower. Phil was right. His shower is way better than Dan’s. It doesn’t spit daggers onto his back. Dan has been so used to that at home that he didn’t even realise how bad it was.

Once he comes out, he walks in on something he wasn’t expecting.

Phil is drawing cat whiskers on his face and PJ is putting up white spiderweb patterned fabric on the walls. Chris hardly looks interested, typing on his phone by the breakfast bar.

Dan put his pyjamas back on after the shower, but Phil has changed into an all black outfit. All black, except for one detail. The front of the knitted jumper has got some kind of a sequins object, sewn into the middle of the chest. Dan can’t tell what it is.

He sits beside Phil and says nothing. Phil looks at him.

“What’s all this?” Dan asks.

“It’s Halloween,” Phil says.

Dan rolls his eyes.

“Alright.”

Phil grins. Then that grin is replaced by a look of momentary uncertainty. It passes. It passes, and Phil takes Dan’s hand even if PJ and Chris are in the room.

“I think we’re releasing this jumper as merch,” Phil says.

Dan really looks at it then. The sequins are purple, in the shape of a crystal. Somehow, Dan manages to go pretty long periods of time without thinking about everything he now knows. When he is here, everything about it seems so normal that Dan simply revels in Phil being Phil and how much he loves him. But Phil is wearing a black jumper with a sequin amethyst in the middle of his chest because he wrote a story in which the amethyst is very important and that blows Dan’s fucking mind.

Phil searches Dan’s eyes. He gets that assessing look on his face again. Dan looks back at him, dumbstruck.

“You alright?” Phil asks quietly.

He is still holding Dan’s hand. Dan nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s just…”

He fails to land on a word that really describes the feeling. Phil meets him in that, because despite not having a word he seems to understand.

Phil pulls Dan’s hand to his chest. Dan frowns.

“What are you doing?”

He is a bit startled, being made to touch Phil there while there are people around.

“Just look,” Phil insists.

He brushes Dan’s hand over the sequins. As they switch direction, the colour on the other side is revealed as green.

Dan didn’t know when it would all truly hit him, or if it would. Now he knows. Because it is hitting him. He is sitting in front of Seagull and playing with his sequins emerald and amethyst jumper and that is so fucking insane and cool and surreal.

“Yeah?” Phil asks.

He’s got a smile on his face. When Dan comes back to himself, he realises that he is grinning like a fool.

“That’s so cool,” Dan says, awestruck and honest, as he keeps switching to green and back to purple.

Phil switches it to be purple on one side, and green on the other.

“Amethyst and emerald fusion,” he grins.

Dan laughs. “Okay, yeah, that’s fucking brilliant.”

“That’s what I said!” Phil says, slightly louder than he has to.

Dan hears a groan from PJ.

“People are gonna love this,” Dan says.

Morgan is going to love it, Dan thinks.

“I can get you one if you want?” Phil says.

“Oh, you don’t have to-”

“No, please, take one,” PJ interrupts him as he comes up behind the sofa they are sitting on. “We have ten of them just lying around.”

Dan doesn’t know how to act. On the inside, part of him is screaming. He is so fucking excited. And he feels strange showing that to Phil and PJ. To Seagull and Triangle. He couldn’t even act excited in DMs with them, but then, it is harder to contain without the distance of a screen.

PJ fetches a jumper for him from a box on the floor next to the TV. Dan takes it in his hands and admires the soft fabric, the colourful sequins.

“You’re adorable,” Phil whispers.

He is smiling so hard. Dan grins. He doesn’t think before he leans forward and kisses him on the mouth. Phil breathes a surprised breath, but he kisses back.

Chris and PJ don’t react in any way. PJ is still busy putting things up on the walls and Chris is still busy with his phone.

Still, when Phil pulls away, they look at each other like they just did something absolutely wild. Dan grins. Phil helps him put the jumper on over his head. It fits him well. It is so soft it feels like a hug.

Phil is looking at his chest. Dan looks down at it, himself. The crystal is green.

“You are a bit like an emerald,” Phil says.

Phil’s crystal is purple.

Phil’s crystal is purple and Dan’s is green and it is all hitting him, but he isn’t scared. Phil is here. His excitement isn’t treated as if it is dangerous. It is treated with love, because that is the only way Phil seems to be able to treat Dan. It gets to him now. He really, truly feels it.

“I’m happy,” Dan says.

Dan and Phil gaze into each other’s eyes. 

Phil smiles. “Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Still Breathing by Green Day
> 
> Since I last posted, SO much art has been shared with me, inspired by Monochrome. Because of this I have added a link to the full fic notes, to a Twitter Moment I created to keep it all in one place. Still, I want to give these art pieces their individual moments to shine.
> 
> 1: Morgan @frogphil's [Morgan comic](https://twitter.com/frogphil/status/1214597453942607872)!! It is based on the comic Morgan made in the early chapters of the fic, and it really looks amazing, and pretty much just like I imagined it. THANK YOU so much!!
> 
> 2: Nessa @nostalgic_djh's [comic](https://twitter.com/nostalgic_djh/status/1214619497207873537) that is based on a scene from the fic. The art style is adorable and I love the choice of scene :') thankyou so much!!<3
> 
> 3: Sude @trenchurie's [sketch](https://twitter.com/trenchurie/status/1214639511524773892) of Dan, sitting in front of his computer playing Fall Whisperer. It is SO cool, because it looks pretty much like how I imagine a lot of parts of the fic. It's really exciting when something you've imagined is visualised in this way, it blows me away. Thank you thank you thank you <3
> 
> 4: Tania @artsydoop's[painting](https://twitter.com/artsydoop/status/1214653511604027393) of Dan and Phil, coloured in green and purple. It's such a cool art piece and it suits the last chapter so well. Thank you so so much <33
> 
> 5: @peachyposure's [sketch](https://twitter.com/peachyposure/status/1215274713473323008) of Dan and Phil lined in purple and green as they kiss. My heart just bursts at art like this, because in my head DnP have been purple and green for so long. It's so cool to know that's their colours to other people too :) Thank you!!! SO much!!<3
> 
> I feel absolutely SPOILED by this art!! I can't believe all of these talented, hard working artists take the time to make something based on something I wrote and I can't thank you enough. I love you all so much :') Make sure to check out this art, support the artists, and to check out the Twitter Moment that is linked in the full fic notes, it's really worth looking through it all! <3


	66. Chapter 66

Happy is an odd feeling.

Dan knows it. He has been unhappy for years and yet, ‘happy’ has made its way into those years at certain points. ‘Happy’ is the elation that is followed by an urgent kind of anxiety that has made ‘happy’ into something bad by association. Dan doesn’t get to be happy. If he feels happy, unhappy is going to feel worse later than it normally does.

These reasonings aren’t true. They are absolute lies, absolute bullshit, that Dan is still affected by. It is easier to disregard them while looking at Phil and his dumb, cute cat whiskered face. It is easier to disregard them when Phil insists that Dan should be the bear to his cat, and Dan play fights him about it until Phil gets his way and Dan’s cheeks are painted with three black dots each and the tip of his nose is painted to look like a bear’s.

Happy is a feeling. Unhappy is a feeling. Neither are a state of being. Neither are absolute and non negotiable. Feeling happy doesn’t mean feeling more unhappy later, or vice versa. The old fears linger, but Dan knows they are bullshit. He is allowed to feel happy. He is allowed to express that. It doesn’t change anything.

And besides, happy looks good on Phil.

The decorations are spread throughout the flat, none of which were hung up by anyone that lives in it.

PJ gets Dan to help out putting up some more spiderwebs, followed by placing miniature pumpkins in odd places of the living room and kitchen. Dan doesn’t miss when Phil takes out a laptop and opens it at the breakfast bar. Chris sits down next to him. It takes all of Dan’s willpower not to run straight over to hover over Phil’s shoulder and see what actually happens behind all of this. It seems none of it actually works like Dan had imagined it would. They are, at the moment, just four guys preparing for a Halloween get together. They aren’t in some type of swanky office waiting to press the big red ‘post’ button, like Dan’s sometimes cartoonish imagination might have suspected they would be.

At least there doesn’t seem to be any bad blood on PJ’s end. It isn’t like him and Dan are best friends now by any means, but things are normal. PJ doesn’t seem angry that Dan is here. He could have been just as upset now, still under the impression that Phil would be in too deep to see Dan’s ‘true intentions’. There could be some of that on PJ’s mind anyway for all Dan knows. Thankfully, if that is what PJ is thinking, he doesn’t act on those thoughts. And that is what matters.

Jimmy and Angie arrive at three pm. Dan notices because Chris speaks for practically the first time all day.

“Jimmy!”

Dan looks over from the sofa to watch the sudden outburst and then Chris is in Jimmy’s arms, in a hug so tight it almost feels intrusive to watch. Despite Chris being platonically cuddly with PJ sometimes, Dan didn’t really take him for the type of person that would display this kind of affection. He watches as Chris peppers Jimmy’s face with kisses as Jimmy laughs and crinkles his nose and that is way cuter than anyone allowed for it to be.

“Yeah, hey, thanks,” is heard from beside Jimmy. Chris untangles himself somewhat reluctantly and hugs the tall red headed woman standing next to him.

PJ and Phil crowd both of them to say hello and Dan feels completely out of place. This feels like a tradition that he has no right to take part in. There is an energy to this group of people that Dan can feel, but it is from the outside. He isn’t actually included.

That is, not until Phil looks back at him. There is a childish glee about Phil right now. Something like a dog, so ecstatic when the family is all gathered again. Dan can’t not smile at that. He can’t not start to feel included when Phil gestures for him to come forward.

He doesn’t get to do so before Angie makes her way to the breakfast bar to sit down.

“Of course,” Phil says, hurrying forward, and goes to pull out a chair.

Angie gives the gesture a pointed look, but she sits down.

“I’m pregnant, not incapicated, Phil,” she complains.

“Shut up and let me dote on you,” he surprises Dan by responding.

Here is a different version of Phil to pick apart. The person that, apparently, Angie brings out of him.

She is beautiful. She is wearing black tights and a black tunic, covering her impressive pregnancy stomach. Her hair is in gorgeous curls and waves, reaching all the way down to her hips. Dan remains standing by one of the sofas in the living room as he watches everyone stand in different spots of the kitchen to chat. PJ, Chris and Jimmy all seem chummy with each other. Dan doesn’t think he has ever seen Chris smile this much before.

When Phil doesn’t prompt Dan again, Dan takes it upon himself to approach Angie. Phil is just turning to go get something from the fridge when he does. 

“Hi,” Angie says. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

It is absolutely on Dan’s mind, the fact that Angie is irregularsymbol. He feels absolutely star struck, standing next to her in his friends’ kitchen. With Phil and PJ it has been different. He knew them before he knew who they were. There is a level of separation because of it. But Angie hasn’t been a person to Dan other than a random name that comes up every so often. Meeting her for the first time while knowing who she is makes Dan’s throat go a bit tight and his hands go a bit sweaty.

Despite this, Dan lets her shake his sweaty hand.

“Me neither,” he says. “I’m Dan.”

“Angie,” she says. “So you’re Phil’s--”

Dan is about to have a crisis when Phil comes back with a box of cereal and a carton of milk. There is a bowl and a spoon in front of Angie already and Dan has to laugh. He has to stare at Phil and the weird mother hen look on his face and think about how absurd he is.

“What?” Phil asks, grinning. “I’m helping.”

Dan covers his mouth to stifle the laughter that, once it comes, can’t be contained.

“Cereal, Phil?” he asks.

Angie glances at Dan. She has a secretive smile on her face.

“She likes it,” Phil says, still smiling, before Angie can say anything. “She’s pregnant. I don’t want the baby to starve.”

There is a playful glint in Phil’s eyes that tells Dan that he is full of shit right now. Angie cackles.

“You’re sucking up to her even while she’s still in the womb,” she says.

The laughter fades and is replaced by a strange feeling in Dan’s stomach. This version of Phil shakes his head and goes to stand behind Angie to wrap his arms around her and rest his chin on her shoulder. Angie huffs a small laugh, but pets Phil’s arm. Her eye catches on the sequins emerald on Dan’s chest.

“Oh, they arrived?” she asks, reaching out to switch Dan’s sequins to purple.

Phil looks Dan in the eye and Dan isn’t sure how to feel. Phil is so affectionate with Angie that it almost makes him feel jealous. It is no secret that Angie must be Phil’s favourite person.

“It’s really pretty,” Angie says.

“Isn’t it?” Phil asks. “It’s even prettier on him.”

Dan blushes to his ears. Angie groans.

“Suck-up,” she says.

“Maybe to you,” Phil says, poking Angie’s cheek. “Not to him.”

Angie gives him a knowing look and stifles a laugh.

“So you work together?” Dan asks in an attempt to break through the suffocating familiarity between the two of them.

Phil stands up. Angie pours herself some cereal.

“We do,” Phil says. “She does music and coding.”

“Please.” Angie rolls her eyes. “That’s my brother’s gig. The coding, I mean. He just fixes all of my mistakes on that. But I will take full credit for the music.”

Dan is standing next to the person that wrote the music he has been listening to on the tube to and from work for two years.

“Cool,” he says with a short nod.

“Dan knows the game,” Phil says.

Dan makes sure he doesn’t look as caught off guard as he feels.

“Oh?” Angie says, giving Phil a look that Dan wants to hide from.

It gives some kind of warning. Something like, _’don’t you remember what happened to PJ?’_

“I didn’t know who Phil was,” Dan says, and he immediately hates himself for it because it makes him sound so incredibly disingenuous. 

Angie’s deep brown eyes remain guarded. Dan doesn’t blame her.

“You guys have no idea how much alike you are,” Phil says out of nowhere. “You don’t need to defend yourself to her, Dan.”

Dan raises an eyebrow. Phil is taking control of the situation. When he looks at Angie, he finds the same raised eyebrow from her. 

“It would be like you to date the male version of me,” Angie says.

Dan doesn’t at all see the female version of himself in Angie. She looks way too put together for that. Regardless, that pulls Phil away from the control he was about to take as he laughs. 

When Phil looks at Dan this time, Dan does see the version of Phil that he knows. It isn’t that he doesn’t know this version of Phil, he realises. He just hasn’t seen it around the other guys before. When it is the two of them, this is exactly who Phil is. A bit cutting, abundantly affectionate, unguarded. The blue and yellow in Phil’s eyes are so bright today.

Maybe Dan is like Angie in some ways. He just has a hard time seeing himself in a pregnant woman with loud dyed red hair. She has the same loudness in her outward appearance as Phil and PJ do, but she is asking to be looked at. Not just by what she wears, but by the confidence that seems to hold it all up.

Dan doesn’t act or dress like a person that asks to be looked at. He doesn’t think so, anyway.

It makes Phil laugh, though, when Angie describes Dan as the male version of herself. It makes him lean onto her shoulder and poke her cheek again. Dan definitely has never seen Phil be this affectionate with anyone apart from himself. He doesn’t even know if Phil is gay. He only knows that Phil likes him, and that Phil has had a boyfriend before him.

Angie gives Dan a smile. Her gaze is just as penetrative as Phil’s is. Dan wonders idly if Phil sees Dan like that, too. 

“So you’re into the game?” Angie asks.

Dan has to get over the fear that question brings up in him. It isn’t a secret anymore, to anyone. All the cards are on the table. He has nothing to be ashamed of. That might be the thing, though. Dan might feel more ashamed of the fact that he still feels a bit uncomfortable, than about the fact that he actually is a fan.

“Yeah,” Dan says with a nod. ‘Into’ doesn’t cover even half of it. “I love it, actually. I’m excited for Caves and Gardens.”

Phil’s eyes light up as soon as Dan mentions the second title. The guarded look on Angie’s face fades away.

They put on music, drink beer and wine, and chat while PJ cooks. Phil pulls up documents and game files on the laptop and Dan feels shaky. In the document, there are hundreds of usernames all lined up to be randomised to win the Halloween contest. He knows most of the usernames. He knows most of these people. He has talked to them, he has played with them, he has had his tweets and forum posts liked by them. It is absolutely surreal that he is in this situation right now.

“So we randomise the three winners,” PJ explains from the stove. “We put them in a separate document. Phil tweets something inconspicuous. Then we eat, and after, we post the winners and the prizes.”

Dan knows the tradition of Seagull tweeting something about an hour before the announcement. He had imagined that serious business was going on during that hour, not a friendly dinner with friends. He even remembers talking about that with Jamie at some point, and how they used to joke about how Seagull was probably not even a person but an entity, a brain in a jar that could only communicate via a computer.

That is not who Seagull is. Seagull is holding Dan’s hand, and he is looking at Dan with a kind of look that Dan is starting to learn now. It means that he is thinking about doing something else, just him and Dan, preferably in bed. Dan still can’t exactly see them as the same person, not even while he is looking at Twitter from Seagull’s account’s perspective.

“Did Chrome enter?” Angie asks, out of nowhere.

Dan freezes.

“Ow!” Phil exclaims.

Apparently, Dan squeezed Phil’s hand hard enough for it to hurt.

“Sorry,” Dan says, breathless.

Is this what Phil felt when Dan talked about Fall Whisperer? Angie can’t know that Dan is Chrome. She wouldn’t have asked if that were the case.

“Don’t think so,” PJ says, completely disregarding Phil’s petulance. “I think I looked for him, but he never enters I don’t think. Right, Phil?”

When Dan looks back at Phil now, Phil has put on his learned neutral expression. So he hasn’t told them. Dan doesn’t know if that is a good thing. He doesn’t know how to feel about it, really. 

Dan can imagine they all remember who he is, given that he has been involved with the three of them before. He wouldn’t have expected them to keep tabs on him, though. He wouldn’t expect Triangle and Symbol to look to Seagull for the answer as to whether Chrome ‘usually participates’ in the contest. Because that implies that Seagull has done this before. He has looked for Chrome specifically among the contestants. Dan can’t figure out why he would do that.

“Yeah,” Phil says. “He doesn’t enter. I don’t think he cares about that stuff.”

“He said yes to play-testing, right?” Angie asks.

“Yup,” Phil says. “So we couldn’t pick him anyway.”

“Wait,” Dan says before he can stop himself. “One of the prizes is…?”

PJ looks at Dan and Dan absolutely shrinks. It isn’t that he seems to disprove of Dan chiming in. He just looks so utterly surprised, so caught off guard. Dan could even argue that PJ looks scared right now.

“Yeah,” PJ responds. “We kind of stepped it up a notch this year.”

“A notch,” Dan echoes in disbelief.

Three winners are randomised. Chris and Jimmy aren’t even taking part of it. They are sitting close together on the sofa, giggling like teenagers. Dan is happy for them. Now that his and Jimmy’s problems are a thing of the past, he can only look at Chris and Jimmy as friends that he is happy to have found one another. An opal and a peridot, loyalty and stability fused into full power.

“Okay,” Phil says, when the three usernames appear on the screen.

“Yes!” PJ exclaims.

“Yeah,” Angie agrees, “these are good.”

They’re huddling so close that Dan can’t even see. They all sound like they know who everyone is. As if these aren’t just usernames flashing by in replies and forum posts. As if the creators actually know what goes on in the fandom, and pay attention.

Phil pulls Dan’s wrist, urging him closer to the screen.

Dan knows all three of the winners, too. @sadduckie is a friend of Morgan’s. She is one of those brave shippers that keep a fun atmosphere and still stands by their opinions. She has collaborated with Morgan on art before. @soonanywhere is another nice person, a Dwhite shipper that posts the odd ficlet. Dan has enjoyed their posts before. And finally, @falldelight. Morgan. Morgan is one of the winners of the Halloween contest for the first time, and she is going to get to playtest Caves and Garden.

Dan squeezes Phil’s hand. Phil gives him a knowing look. He must know who Morgan is, if he has kept such close tabs on Chrome. Dan bites the inside of his cheek not to smile like an idiot. Part of him wants to DM Morgan right now and tell her, but he won’t.

“Falldelight,” PJ says. He is allowing himself to smile as hard as Dan wants to. “She’s great.”

“Are you catching feelings?” Angie laughs.

PJ squints at her playfully and shakes his head.

“Even if that wasn’t wrong as hell, I’m over girls for the moment anyway,” he says. “Her illustrations are just so crazy good. She turns my doodles into actual art pieces.”

“Doodles,” Phil says in disapproving voice.

Dan is still caught on PJ being ‘over girls’. He was under the impression that PJ was gay this whole time, so much so that he hadn’t even thought about it until it was put up to question.

Even if this is all kind of unbelievable and Dan can’t tell his fandom friends now, if ever, he does feel like he needs them right now. He wants them to know that he still thinks about them. He has been so flaky about his participating lately that he wouldn’t be surprised if he was kicked out of the group chat.

Before they sit down for dinner, Dan gets his phone out and sends a simply message to the group. Simple, but loud. Dan doesn’t make statements like these, ever.

**achromatic_bot** : i love you guys <3

Phil, PJ and Angie are all in a good mood as they all sit down around the coffee table with their pasta bolognese. Chris and Jimmy remain in their own world. Dan stares down at his plate and thinks about Morgan. He thinks about Chrome. He thinks about how the hell he should tell these people that it’s him. Phil knows, but…

In that moment, Phil leans in to Dan’s ear.

“Alright?” he whispers.

Dan nods tightly. Phil’s voice sounds like it does when they are alone. It pulls the emotions out from his chest. He can’t let them show right now. He doesn’t even understand them himself yet.

“Yeah,” Dan says. Phil raises an eyebrow. “But I want to talk to you later. Privately.”

He doesn’t put things up anymore. He is going to ask Phil; he is going to do the difficult thing because he cares about him.

“Sure,” Phil says. “After the announcement?”

He doesn’t look scared. He hasn’t put up any walls. Dan’s anxiety is somewhat soothed.

“After the announcement,” Dan agrees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Bright Lights by Placebo
> 
> This week, Oli @_waterjuice shared the [necklace](https://twitter.com/_waterjuice/status/1215493272489070598) they made, inspired by Monochrome. It's absolutely stunning and they're so skilled so I wanted to mention it here if you guys want to check it out <3


	67. Chapter 67

Phil tweets in the middle of dinner. He deliberately shows Dan the screen while he is figuring it out. Dan’s heart is pounding, watching Phil type out “squawk”, deleting it, then going to look at the emoji keyboard. He lets out a thoughtful noise, stalling.

Then he looks at Dan. Dan almost doesn’t notice at first. He is too entranced by the fact that he is looking at the Seagull profile picture. He is too busy trying to comprehend that this is a tweet that, if Dan didn’t know Phil, he would have seen on his timeline and talked about with his friends.

But Dan feels Phil watching him and he looks up to find Phil looking at his lips, then up into his eyes. Dan smiles at him. Phil’s eyes crinkle in the corners as he smiles back.

Phil looks down at his phone and types out “SQUAWK” in capital letters. Then he adds a row of emojis underneath. It is a rain cloud, a lightning bolt, and a black heart. Dan feels a rush going through his chest and swooping down through his stomach, and Phil hits ‘send’.

PJ and Angie both receive the notification instantly. Dan feels his phone buzz in his pocket. Then it buzzes some more. His friends are already messaging him about it.

“What’s with the emojis?” PJ asks. “It looks so sinister.”

Phil shrugs. “It’s a storm. We all know it’s going to be a storm.”

“Still sounds a bit sinister,” Angie chimes in.

Phil glances at Dan. Dan holds on to a loose thread of Phil’s jeans, just to feel connected to him in some way.

“It’s not,” Phil says. “It’s exciting. That’s what the heart is there for.”

PJ snorts.

“Alright,” he says. “You know the social media game better than any of us. I won’t question it.”

They go back to dinner. Dan thinks about how unbelievable it is that his life has taken him here, to the love of his life, surrounded by friends. Caves and gardens and the darkness have their places in Dan’s mind. These people are crystals in their own rights. But this is all real. He is in his friends’ living room, having dinner, and chatting. He doesn’t need a metaphor to enjoy it.

-

After dinner and putting the dishes away, Phil sits down by the laptop. Dan makes a point of going to sit down on the sofa with Chris and Jimmy while Angie and PJ sit on either side of Phil at the breakfast bar. They are going to announce it now. The prizes and the winners. As curious as Dan is, he won’t hover.

“I take it you and Phil talked about the job thing?” Jimmy says when Dan sits down.

Chris’s legs are on Jimmy’s lap. Jimmy has an arm around Chris’s waist. Chris is the picture of infatuation, watching Jimmy’s face as he speaks.

“We did,” Dan says. “Sorry about that call, by the way. I wasn’t really in a good state of mind.”

“That’s okay,” Jimmy says. “I’m just happy you worked it out. I really…”

He stops. Dan raises an eyebrow in question.

“I like you guys together,” Jimmy finishes. “You make sense together.”

Dan wouldn’t call any of what has happened in the past months something that makes sense, but he understands what Jimmy means anyway. Chris looks at Dan, nodding in agreement.

“You do,” he says.

Dan has never had a proper relationship. He has never been with someone and felt comfortable with other people knowing something is going on. It is a new feeling. Exposing, in a way. As if people can look right into Dan’s mind and see what matters to him. The idea of that would be terrifying, but when the answer to it is “Phil”, it isn’t scary. Phil is the best person Dan has ever met. He feels proud of being with him. He feels proud of the fact that someone like Phil would like him back.

Before Dan can respond with something other than a bashful smile, his phone rings. Dan pulls it out of his pocket, seeing Morgan’s name on the screen. He glances over at the breakfast bar. Angie, Phil, and PJ are staring intently at the screen. They must have announced it.

“Alright?” Jimmy asks.

Dan is pulled out of the strange vortex he found himself in.

“Yeah,” he says, “just gotta take this.”

He gets up from the sofa and marches into Phil’s bedroom. He closes the door behind himself, sits down on Phil’s desk chair, and accepts the call.

“Hello?” he whispers.

Something muffled is heard from the other end.

“Morgan?”

“Chrome, oh my God,” Morgan squeaks.

Dan’s heart melts. Morgan sounds like she is crying and smiling at the same time. She knows she won. She knows she won and Dan was the person that she thought to call.

“You won,” Dan breathes.

“Can you believe it?” Morgan asks. “I can’t. I can’t believe it. I’m going to… And Duckie too! I’m gonna fucking lose it.”

Dan laughs. There are so many more unbelievable things about this scenario. If only Morgan knew that Dan is currently sat in Seagull’s bedroom, wearing an unreleased piece of merchandise.

“I know,” Dan says. “I’m so happy for you. You deserve it.”

“You should’ve entered,” Morgan says.

“Oh,” Dan says. “No, it’s okay. I was actually--”

Anything he says right now sounds like bragging. He doesn’t care. He wants Morgan to know.

“I was asked if I could playtest it too,” he says. “Seagull DMed me about it the other week.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Morgan practically shouts. “Oh my God! I didn’t know you were still talking!”

Dan smiles to himself.

“I didn’t want to rub it in or anything, I don’t know,” he says honestly.

“Fuck off,” Morgan laughs. “I’m so-- I can’t believe this, Dan. This is so cool.”

Dan laughs.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “It is.”

“I have to call Jamie,” Morgan says. “I just had to talk to you. I miss you.”

Dan’s heart clenches.

“I miss you too,” he says.

“Okay,” Morgan says, taking a finalising breath. “I’ll talk to you later. I love you, bye.”

“Love you too,” Dan says. “Bye.”

Morgan ends the call. Dan remains sat on Phil’s desk chair and checks his timeline. The fandom is celebrating. They are taking this to mean that the game is so far along to getting done now that it could be released within the next year. They are probably right, Dan thinks. If he wants to, he can always ask Phil about it.

-

When Dan returns to the living room, everyone is sat on the sofas again. Phil has his laptop on his lap, scrolling while PJ looks over his shoulder. Dan sits down next to PJ. Phil glances at him, and shuts his laptop. PJ makes a whining noise. 

“Hi,” Phil says. “Where did you go off to?”

“Nowhere,” Dan says. “Got a call.”

He can’t not smile, thinking about the excitement in Morgan’s voice. Phil smiles back even though he doesn’t know what it is about. PJ looks between the two of them, incredulous.

“Hey, Phil,” PJ says instead of saying whatever he is thinking. “Did you ask Chrome yet?”

“About the play test?” he asks. “Yeah.”

“No, I meant the other thing.”

Phil shakes his head. It’s a tight, quick movement that immediately makes PJ shut his mouth. Phil glances at Dan. Dan tries not to look as anxious as he feels. PJ looks back at Dan as well. He doesn’t seem to realise why they can’t talk about it, but he knows it has to do with Dan’s presence.

Dan is going to tell PJ and Angie at some point, but not tonight. He can’t tonight.

“Alright,” PJ says, getting up. “I should be going now, anyway.”

“Going?” Angie asks. “Where?”

“I’ve got a date,” PJ says, making his way past the coffee table.

Dan frowns.

“I thought you said you were over girls?” he asks before he thinks better of it.

At that, everyone starts laughing. Dan has no idea what that’s supposed to mean.

“Exactly,” PJ says. “Girls.”

“Oh,” Dan says, realising. “Sorry.”

“Don’t,” Phil says, nudging Dan’s side with his elbow. “He loves being a jackass about that.”

“Sorry, boys, not everyone is just one thing,” PJ says with a shrug. “Queer people exist.”

Queer. In a way, this feels like the first time Dan has ever really heard that word.

Dan is very much not just one thing, in any regard. He feels an intense sense of being watched. As if PJ is commenting on that very fact, like he knows, even though he couldn’t possibly. It isn’t that Dan is ashamed of it. He just hates being put on the spot, in any sense. He hates feeling prompted to say something that is for sure about himself, when he hasn’t thought about it enough to feel sure about anything.

He can’t stop thinking about the word queer, though. It has been used against him before, but said in the way that PJ said it, it is such a freeing term.

“Go on, then,” Angie says, “leave.”

She sticks her nose up. PJ touches her shoulder.

“Stop that,” he says.

“No,” she says. “Here I am, pregnant as hell and still coming over and you care more about dick than you care about me.”

PJ laughs. Whatever jargon these people have, Dan kind of loves it.

A couple of hours pass and everyone ends up doing their own thing. Angie is napping in Chris’s bedroom, Chris and Jimmy are talking on the sofa, while Dan and Phil look at the twitter timeline on Phil’s laptop on the sofa opposite them.

The excitement hasn’t died down since the announcement. Phil has responded to a few replies, which has basically pushed the fandom into a state of almost frantic uproar. Dan finds himself laughing with Phil as Dan points him to which people to respond to. Even though Phil seems to have a better grasp of the fandom than Dan realised, Dan still knows more. To be honest, if Dan would use his knowing Phil for anything, it would be for this. For making his friends feel seen by the person they admire so much.

Dan rests his head on Phil’s shoulder with a smile. Phil shuts the laptop. He takes Dan’s hand.

“Wanna go have that talk now?” he whispers.

Dan’s heart pounds, but he agrees.

He agrees, and he follows Phil into his bedroom, flipping Chris and Jimmy off when they make stupid suggestive noises. As if they won’t be all over each other as soon as they are alone.

The moment the door shuts behind Dan, Phil’s lips are on his. He pushes his fingers into the belt loops of Dan’s jeans and Dan clutches at Phil’s sides, grabbing at the material of the black jumper as he lets his neck be practically devoured.

“Fuck,” Dan groans. “Jimmy and Chris are gonna know.”

“I don’t care,” Phil mumbles.

Dan groans some more. His eyes shut. Phil is so aggressive about it in an unusual way and Dan can only accept it. He more than accepts it, really. He accepts it so much that he forgets the original reason why they went into Phil’s bedroom.

That might be why he makes a disappointed sound when Phil steps back and takes a breath.

“We’re not gonna fuck now,” he laughs.

Dan scrunches his nose.

“You sure about that, baby?” he teases.

He expects Phil to dismiss him and laugh at the joke, but instead the rush of arousal that the word elicits in him makes its way into Phil’s eyes and Dan is caught off guard. Phil is so genuine, so unapologetically attracted to him. It is absolutely too good to be true.

“I’m sure,” Phil says, despite that look on his face. “We were going to talk. I just couldn’t keep my hands off you for longer.”

Dan shakes his head. He sits down on Phil’s bed. Phil sits down next to him. He takes Dan’s hand. The room smells like honey and citrus.

“So I didn’t tell them about Chrome,” Phil says.

Dan waits.

“I didn’t get to tell you like I wanted to,” Phil shrugs. “I wanted you to have that opportunity. You told me. You can tell them, too, right? In any way you want. I could tell them, if you wanted me to.”

At the moment, Dan finds that he doesn't care about that. He only cares about whether or not Phil knows.

“Thanks,” he says anyway, because he is grateful that Phil is thoughtful enough to do that.

Phil gives him a suspicious look. He must not have expected this conversation to be so short. It won’t be, but that is for reasons other than he knows.

“What did PJ want you to ask Chrome?” Dan asks.

Phil’s eyes widen. He definitely didn’t expect that. Dan tilts his head to his side, regarding Phil’s expression with a frown. He isn’t upset, really. He is just feeling confused. The creators have talked about Chrome as if he isn’t just a fan all night, and Dan wants answers.

“Okay,” Phil says, gathering himself. “Okay, alright, I guess this is it.”

Dan’s heart starts pounding. He squeezes Phil’s hand. Phil squeezes back with a small, nervous smile.

“You know how I told you I was taking steps to not be as anonymous to people?” he asks.

Dan nods.

“Well, part of that was because the three of us have talked about hiring people,” Phil says. “Well, one person, for now. We can’t really be just us and Angie’s brother forever. The fandom is growing every day and we need the help.”

Fuck.

“So I was going to ask Chrome,” Phil says. “And if he said yes, he would have to find out about all of us. Which is terrifying to me.”

Dan bites his bottom lip. He doesn’t know how to feel.

“What was the job?” he asks.

“Nothing huge at first,” Phil says. “Help managing the forum and stuff? Kind of act as a link between us and the fandom? But, honestly, I thought that I could…”

He stops.

“Could what?” Dan asks.

Phil looks sheepish, avoiding Dan’s stare. He strokes the back of Dan’s hand with his thumb.

“I thought I could bounce ideas off him,” he says. “He seems to have such a good grasp of what the story means, and what I’m actually trying to do with Dye and White and this whole world of Fall Whisperer. He just gets it in a way that not even PJ or Angie do.”

That is such a big thing to Dan that he is pulled out of the fact that Phil is Phil and thinks of him as Seagull. He thinks of himself, sat in his room back home with the world crashing around him as he played Fall Whisperer for the first time, and it is overwhelming. It is overwhelming to know that everything Dan took from that experience resonates with Seagull. With Phil.

“What do you mean?” Dan asks.

If Phil notices how tight Dan’s voice is, he doesn’t mention it. Phil looks back into Dan’s eyes.

“I had to explain it to them for them to get it,” he says. “He just gets it.”

The surreality of the moment reaches a point that feels so incredibly real. Dan can’t question all of this or how it happened anymore. This is just what things have turned out to be like. In some way, it does make sense. Just like Jimmy said. Phil and Dan make sense together.

“I could really use that,” Phil says. “I could use someone that understands, to work out certain things that I want to get across in the new story. And I think he-”

They look each other in the eyes and start laughing at the same time.

“You,” Phil corrects himself. “You. Of course, it’s you.”

Dan giggles.

“As if two people in the world could fully get where I’m coming from,” Phil jokes. “It had to be the same one, right?”

That resonates with a place inside of Dan that he didn’t know existed.

“Yeah,” he says. “I could say the exact same thing.”

Phil kisses him. Dan wants to cry, but it isn’t from stress or confusion. He feels everything so deeply, everything that has happened and could happen now that Phil is in his life.

“You can’t hire me now,” Dan says once he pulls away.

Phil frowns.

“Why not?” he asks. “Come on.”

He sounds so disappointed that Dan’s heart bursts.

“I’ll help you anyway, idiot, are you joking?” Dan laughs. “It’s just weird if you actually give me a title at this point. Or paid me. I’m your--”

He stops. An air of playfulness exudes from Phil as he tilts his head to the side and regards Dan with a shit-eating grin.

“My what?” he asks.

Dan can tell what Phil wants him to say by the excited insecure hesitance in his fidgety hands. Dan takes hold of them, really takes hold of them, stopping the tremors. Just like he imagined the first time they met. He can ground Phil into something more solid.

“Your boyfriend,” Dan finishes, fighting the urge to make it sound like a question. Dan is sure about this.

Phil smiles so hard Dan is sure his cheeks are going to split open.

“Really?” Phil asks. “How presumptuous of you, Dan. You didn’t even ask.”

Dan laughs and lets go of Phil’s hands in order to slap his shoulder.

“Shut up, idiot,” he laughs.

“No,” Phil says. “Ask me.”

“Fuck off,” Dan tries again.

“Uh-uh,” Phil insists. “Ask.”

Dan rolls his eyes. He pushes Phil to lie down on the bed and straddles him, wrestling him a little bit while Phil fruitlessly tries to push him away.

“Will you be my boyfriend, Phil?” Dan asks in a mocking voice. “Please?”

He tickles Phil’s side and Phil shrieks.

“Don’t!” he yells. “Oh, my God!”

Dan stops, but it’s not without wiggling his fingers in front of Phil’s face so that Phil flinches.

“Yes, Dan,” Phil says around a laugh in that same mocking, childish tone. “I’ll be your boyfriend. Since you’re asking so nicely.”

“Idiot,” Dan says.

He leans down and kisses Phil. It is more heated than Dan intended for it to be, but that isn’t just on him. Phil grabs at Dan’s back and pushes him down harder on top of himself and Dan is a mess within seconds, grinding down against him.

“We can’t do this right now,” Phil says, followed by a moan that completely takes away from the statement.

Dan feels it in his dick.

“I hate you,” Dan groans.

He rolls off from on top of Phil. He knows he is right. They have guests around and Angie is probably going to leave at some point and Dan would rather not have her first impression of him be that he went to fuck Phil as soon as she went for a nap.

“Sorry,” Phil says.

He doesn’t sound sorry in the least.

Dan looks up as Phil pushes himself onto his elbows, looking down at Dan. He reaches out and traces his knuckles along the side of Dan’s face. The urge to cry returns and Dan lets it happen. He leans into Phil’s hand and lets a few tears roll down his face. Phil looks at him and holds him in a way that Dan feels so deeply that it almost crushes him. 

“Are you okay?” Phil whispers.

Dan nods.

“I love you so much,” he says.

Phil keeps a steady hold of Dan’s face as he leans down and kisses him. Dan starts laughing into the kiss.

“I told you not to kiss me while I’m crying.”

Phil pulls away with a grin.

“I just wanted to,” he says.

Dan smiles. “I wanted you to, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Last Goodbye by Toby Fox
> 
> Since the last time, sara @siiildie on twitter posted [this drawing](https://twitter.com/siiildie/status/1216501533954756609)! I love it so much. It is absolutely gorgeous :') and not only that, rafi @itssrafina posted [a sketch](https://twitter.com/itssrafina/status/1216757712580681728) that is so pretty and cute and Them :') Thank you both SO much for these wonderful art pieces.
> 
> Also, just so you know, the end is nigh. 
> 
> The next chapter is the final chapter of Monochrome.


	68. Chapter 68

During the following week, a lot of changes happen.

Chris moves out. Not to his own place, but in with Jimmy. In turn, PJ moves in with Phil. With Phil and Dan, practically. Dan has stayed at Phil’s flat since Friday night and he doesn’t plan on leaving more than he has to. While Phil and PJ go to the office, Dan spends his time in Phil’s bedroom, playing on the server with his friends. He isn’t going to tell them, not now. If he ever does, it will be when things have settled down a bit. Phil has to give the okay, too. That isn’t impossible now. Because things are changing, and that is good. There are only good changes happening and Dan might still stave off the spectator and the immediate, negative thoughts that come into his brain but he has so much now that he didn’t have before.

He has made the same progress that his shadow has.

Dan finishes the email for Susanne, too. He feels anxious and scared about it but he sends it off anyway. That is how things work now, apparently. Apparently, Dan can feel like he is about to die _and_ do the thing he knows will be the most productive and best for himself in the end. It isn’t an automatic thing. It probably never will be. Dan is going to have to consciously do what is difficult and while that might feel like a suffocating existence sometimes, it is worth it. Keeping his life small and never going outside the boundaries he set up for himself in order to keep his mental health out of danger worked in its own ways, but that is not how Dan wants to live. Living like that isn’t really living. He won’t go into the darkness, after all, and so his life has to matter. Dan will make it matter.

The session with Susanne the following Friday is the most productive therapy session he has ever had. He has been seeing her for a year and a half, and yet, she knew close to nothing about his life. She knew his family, his past, and all the hard things that crushed Dan enough to not be able to work or pursue his life. Now she knows about the good things, too. She knows about Fall Whisperer. She knows about Phil. She knows that Dan thinks that ‘queer’ might be the label he could feel comfortable with for himself.

When they end the session, it is with a fulfilling feeling of progress. They aren’t done. Dan is not done with therapy. He still has things to process, to talk about, that he can’t work out with the people in his life. He may be able to talk about close to everything with Phil, but Phil can’t give Dan the same educated responses that Susanne can. If this were a year ago, Dan would have cut Susanne off and clung onto Phil to solve his problems. That is not the person Dan wants to be. He still has the impulse, but he is now capable of instead acting on the awareness that that is not a good choice to make.

Finally, Dan feels like he actually has a choice in life.

Dan would love for this part of his life not to include the stresses from his family. He would love to be at the other side and not feel that deep sense of dread in his stomach upon receiving a text message from Mum or Dad. He would love to feel a true sense of closure with the two of them. He would love to feel like they understand where he is coming from, in the same way that he tries to understand them.

But, now Dan has a choice. He will never let go of his family. He loves and cares about them, while staying aware that he can’t let them have all of him. He can’t let them control his life. He can’t act on the anxiety they push on him. It is not Dan’s anxiety to deal with. Miscommunication and arguments will happen because now that Dan stands up for himself, he is in turn disappointing them. 

Dan doesn’t have a perfect life. He won’t ever have a perfect life.

He is sad that he won’t have the family he used to wish he could have. He will never not feel sad about that. The fact is, though, that not a lot of people get that perfect family. They might not all get one as bad as Dan’s, but Dan is not alone in this. No matter how lonely he feels inside his family’s boundaries, he is never alone. He is never trapped. There was, and is, always hope. He has the power to alleviate the discomfort by prioritising himself. He has people in his life that can help him prioritise himself.

At this point in his life, Dan is glad he never gave into the darkness. He is glad that he didn’t end up taking his own life. No matter how difficult things can be, he won’t allow his life to be too hard to live anymore.

He may go into the garden sometimes, to recoup. He may have to go into the cave at other times, and relearn his progress, but the darkness is not the answer. He can remain aware of the other side, of the life he never chose, and accept it. He just knows that when those parts of his life are pushing and pulling him in a loop of indecision and terror, there is a light at the bottom of the opposite cave. It may take a while, but eventually, he will return to the light again.

No matter where he is, purple is inside his heart. Green is on his sleeve.

The emerald and the amethyst exist within himself and Phil is by his side, existing as solid proof that love is there as long as Dan allows himself to accept it.

Love is not earned. Love exists, even when things are hard. It will still be there as long as Dan takes care of himself, first and foremost. As long as he does that, he will be able to give the love he gets.

-

Two days after Dan’s big therapy session, him and Phil get the flat to themselves for the day.

They stay in bed for way too long, only pulled out of it when they get too hungry to stay in it. It is the second week of November, and Dan’s life is at a point he never expected it to be. At two points of his life, Phil has somehow found him in his darkest moments. Dan doesn’t believe in souls, or chance, or destiny. Believing in that would, in his opinion, validate the horrible things he has gone through and he will never allow that. Despite this, Phil has been there, as if he was meant to be there.

Sitting beside Phil on the sofa as they compare the sizes of their stomachs after finishing an excessive breakfast, Dan feels like he is meant to be here.

They end up watching a film while wrapping up in the same blanket and drinking hot cocoa. It reminds Dan of being a child, during the odd weekends he would spend at his grandparents’ house. He remembers feeling like those days were Christmas, because he would spend them feeling safe and warm and happy and loved.

Tangled up with Phil wrapped in a blanket, Dan feels safe and warm and happy and loved. They watch what turns out to be a shit film and make fun of it for the full two hours it plays. Once it is over, Dan is resting his head against Phil’s chest. Phil is touching his hair in soothing motions. He brushes the tips of his fingers over the side of Dan’s face. It is familiar to the way Mum touches him, when he inevitably ends up curled up with his head on her lap. The reminder still hurts, a little bit. The longing is still there, because that longing is so strong. It will never fade. Dan is able to focus on what is happening now, though. He is able to focus on the fact that he is safe and held by a person that loves him more than Dan would ever imagine another person could love him.

“Why didn’t Fall Whisperer end?” Dan whispers.

It comes out suddenly, a passing thought that Dan is verbalising. For as long as it takes Phil to respond, Dan wonders if Phil fell asleep.

“Hm?” is the response Phil eventually comes up with.

“Fall Whisperer,” Dan says, speaking up. “It never ends. The storyline does, but you can still do quests and explore the world as much as you want to.”

He looks up at Phil’s face. Phil makes a considering noise.

“Why?” he asks. “Do you not like that?”

Dan smiles. He wants to make a joke. But the world is quiet and for now, only this conversation exists. Dan wants to make it matter. He has the power to do that now.

“I used to prefer games that ended,” he says. “I used to feel like games that kept going were overstaying their welcome, sort of.”

“Wow,” Phil says in a mock-offended tone.

Dan breathes out a laugh.

“Shut up,” he says. “I changed my mind.”

“Oh?” Phil says. “What changed your mind, then?”

“The more I played the post-game, the more I got into it,” Dan says. “And I made friends. It was fun. I don’t know.”

Phil hums. He remains silent.

“Why did you make it that way?” Dan asks.

Something vulnerable appears in Phil’s eyes. Dan takes Phil’s hand.

“I was advised not to keep it going,” he says. “In case it failed, you know? Keeping it open would mean a lot more maintenance and more costs and we weren’t sure we would be able to meet even the first of those.”

“Yeah,” Dan says.

“But I wanted it enough to risk it,” Phil says.

Dan squeezes Phil’s hand.

“Why?” he asks.

“I was tired of fearing the end,” Phil says. “After my dad’s illness, I didn’t want to push that onto another person if I didn’t have to. It isn’t the same thing, but it just became something in my head. Something to hold on to. Something that made me feel in control.”

Phil looks down and Dan stares back up into the yellow of his eyes.

“People talk about how much the game means to them,” he says, “but it means so much to me, too. The characters mean so much to me. They’re a part of myself, something I could put myself into and have them make the progress I wish I could make.”

“You have made progress,” Dan argues.

“I have,” Phil says. “I’m a lot more aware of my own limits, but also of my strengths, you know? But keeping the game going and keeping the characters around has felt safe to me, in that way.”

Dan nods.

“You love Dye and White, right?” Phil asks.

It catches Dan off guard, but he recovers quickly.

“Yeah,” he says.

“It’s strange,” Phil says. “As I was writing them I found myself falling in love with them, too. But then I thought about why, and I figured it’s because their intentions are good. They have a lot of good qualities, and their flaws are redeemable, understandable, relatable.”

Phil pauses.

“Isn’t it interesting how we love characters that are relatable but won’t extend that compassion to ourselves?” he asks. “I still catch myself thinking about how much they’re like me, especially now that we’re working on Caves and Gardens. I think about how, if I can work with their flaws, I could work with my own. It’s a roundabout way of self love, but at least it’s self love.”

Is that what Dan has been doing, putting his own mental health journey into the context of Fall Whisperer? Has he been attempting that self love by seeing himself reflected in Dye and White?

“I just didn’t want that ending,” Phil says. “I wanted to keep that feeling. And if someone enjoyed the world I created I’d love for them to keep exploring it and to make something of their own with it. But yeah. Mostly I couldn’t stop the conviction that I could make the world a bit better by giving someone else something I didn’t have. It’s just a game, I know, but I feel like that matters.”

“I don’t want things to end, either,” Dan says.

Phil looks into Dan’s eyes and traces the side of his face with three fingers.

“So they won’t.”

-

In the beginning of Caves and Gardens, you are faced with a choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Canzone Africana IV by Ludovico Einaudi
> 
> Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for taking the time to read this story.

**Author's Note:**

> || Thank you to [Jane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jestbee) for the help and encouragement on this story <3 Make sure to read her amazing work!!
> 
>  
> 
> [ **[fic playlist]** ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ROzoNM7t5VZC5dnCIxxUr)
> 
>  
> 
> [ **[ monochrome art ]** ](https://twitter.com/i/events/1214661666186649604)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> || Come say hi on [tumblr](https://intoapuddle.tumblr.com) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/intoapuddle)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Tend to me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20834744) by [jestbee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jestbee/pseuds/jestbee)
  * [do you know who i am?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22284079) by Anonymous 
  * [forgive me seagull for i have sinned](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22309084) by [sierraadeux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sierraadeux/pseuds/sierraadeux)
  * [Squawk!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22311721) by [Interficcia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interficcia/pseuds/Interficcia)
  * [refraction](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22322419) by [indistinct_echo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indistinct_echo/pseuds/indistinct_echo)
  * [Morgan](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22347370) by [key_equals_lock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/key_equals_lock/pseuds/key_equals_lock)




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